Patients will need to travel 400 miles if a pain management centre in Glasgow is closed, a former health secretary has warned.

Alex Neil has stepped into the row over funding cuts in Glasgow calling on the Scottish Government to provide cash for a service.

The Centre for Integrative Care, which includes homeopathy and other non-traditional care and chronic pain management at Gartnavel, risks losing its in-patients beds after health bosses said they can no longer afford it.

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The board plans to shut the seven beds and use it only as a day centre, after other health boards pulled funding even though the chief executive said it was still viable just months ago.

Patients however say that residential care is vital and Alex Neil, Health Secretary until last year, said it should be saved.

He has written to the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions committee calling for his predecessor, Shona Robison to step in and save the centre for patients across the country to use.

He said the alternative for chronic pain residential care is people travelling to Bath in Somerset, 384 miles away by car or six hours on a train.

The CIC is one of four services earmarked for cuts which health officials refused to take out of their Local Delivery Plan after councillors warned them Government ministers would not give approval.

Mr Neil’s letter will be considered by the petitions committee today.

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In it, he said: “My first concern is regarding the need to guarantee the future of the new residential care facility based at Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow for people suffering from chronic pain. I am asking the committee to seek an urgent assurance from both the Board and the Scottish Government that this facility will not be affected by any cuts, so that chronic pain sufferers who require residential care are no longer required to go to Bath for such care.”

The solution to lack of funding, he said was for the government to take over responsibility.

He added: “Secondly whilst I recognise that many Health Boards have ceased funding for the Centre for Integrative Care, which I very much regret, the NHS is supposed to be patient-centred. The needs of patients must come first. I believe there is therefore a strong case for the CIC to be funded centrally by the Scottish Government. People who benefit from this service from throughout Scotland should be entitled to continue to receive it. GGCHB cannot be expected to provide the funding for people outside its area to receive services from the CIC.”

The petitioner Catherine Hughes is angry that the health board is considering the cutbacks.

She said: “The patients are extremely concerned and angry at the duplicity of GGCHB who have for years said that there is no threat to the services at the NHS Centre of Integrative Care.”

NHS GG&C said previously to the Evening Times: “The Board is planning to engage with the public on a range of service changes during this year with a view to making decisions in late 2016.”