MIDWIVES at the Horton General Hospital broke their silence last night with an impassioned plea to preserve the maternity unit.

Hundreds packed into St Mary's Church in Banbury at 7pm for a Q&A session with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

After two hours of heated debate, midwife Kirsty Radcliffe took to the stage to read a collective statement from those working at the unit.

She said: "Until now, our presence and our voices have remained quiet. We plead to you to reject your trust's contingency plans and pull together with agencies and doctors.

"We demand that our place within OUH is acknowledged and you recognise the role the whole of the Horton General Hospital plays in this community."

The speech received a standing ovation from audience members and ended a final public discussion on the issue before it is decided on next Wednesday.

Members of the OUH board including chief executive Bruno Holthof, medical director Tony Berendt and clinical services director Paul Brennan joined the panel alongside obstetrics experts and members of Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group to take questions from the public and the Keep the Horton General campaign.

Chairing the event, St Mary's vicar The Rev Philip Cochrane joked that he was "slightly scared" and put questions from a 90-strong shortlist to those present.

The maternity unit at the Horton is set to become temporarily midwife-led from September due to a lack of middle-grade doctors filling vacant posts in obstetrics.

Catherine Greenwood, senior obstetrician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, said since April OUH had found only a handful of suitable applicants, all of whom later dropped out.

She said: "There is a national shortage of people in training grades and you have a better chance of progressing your career if you go to a recognised post."

Posts have been advertised on a premium salary of £38,200 per annum on a 12-month contract. 

If the unit goes midwife-led, mothers deemed 'high risk' will have to travel to the John Radcliffe Hospital where capacity is being increased for an extra 1,000 births a year.

A single ambulance - but only one - is set to be parked outside the Horton General Hospital to convey expectant mothers to the JR if necessary.

Furious audience members asked what would happen if complications such as shoulder dystocia or post-partum haemorrhage occurred during a 'low-risk' birth.

One woman said: "My son had meningitis. If the Horton had been shut my son would have died."

Obstetrician Stephen Kennedy said: "We are uniquely introducing a programme of routinely scanning babies at 34 to 36 weeks to identify babies at increased risk."

The meeting was interrupted by heckling and many of those in the audience suggested OUH had never wanted to fill the empty posts at all.

Speaking on behalf of the CCG, Dr Paul Park, a partner at Hightown Surgery in Banbury, said: "As a local GP I feel the anger and pain in this room.

"But if you can't recruit you can't recruit. We are not talking about giving up but that's how it is. It's a tragedy and we have to deal with it."