MP KEVAN JONES is demanding answers from Health Secretary John Reid as to why patients travelled 20 miles for private scans while an NHS machine stood idle.

In his letter to the Health Secretary, the North Durham MP says it is "totally unacceptable" that NHS funds are being used to buy in private scans while a local hospital's existing scanner is under-utilised.

The problem was revealed after Mr Jones took up the case of a number of his constituents who told him they were facing waits of up to 18 months for high-tech MRI scans.

Mr Jones wrote to John Saxby, chief executive of the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

In his reply, Mr Saxby criticised arrangements which meant that the MRI scanner at the University Hospital of North Durham (UHND) was being under-used, while patients were having to travel to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough for scans using a private MRI machine owned by Alliance Medical.

This followed a £90m deal between Alliance Medical and the Government to provide an extra 60,000 scans.

In his letter, Mr Saxby writes: "The MRI scanner at the UHND is considerably under-employed and has been for some time, and it is the case that had the Alliance Medical money been directed to us at the UHND we would have been able to put on a large number of scan clinics."

The portable scanner could not be sited at Durham because of a lack of hard standing and power points.

In his letter to Mr Reid, Mr Jones called for "the interests of patients and tax payers" to be put first.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said mobile scanners were helping to bring down waiting times.