Re-examination

Mr. Dunbar also urged re-examination of present track maintenance methods.

Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock told 198 patients to return for re-examination last month after the NHS said they had not received the full range of checks.

Barker believed that evidence was emerging that a "solid proportion" of operations were "grossly uneconomic", and that no amount of improvement in equipment would make them viable. He suggested that "while the superstructure of the report is correct, the foundations require radical re-examination".