The man who gave Brighton's Nigel Porter breast cancer unit its name says plans to transfer the service out of the city are "shameful".

Mr Porter was a consultant surgeon at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton from 1963 until his retirement in 1985.

Much of his surgical work involved women with breast cancer, before the services were specialised.

In the Eighties, medical professionals realised diseases such as breast cancer would benefit from being treated on one site, bringing cytology, pathology, surgery and radiotherapy together.

In Brighton, such a central unit was opened in 1993 in the name of Mr Porter, who was highly regarded in medical circles.

Mr Porter, now 76, has backed The Argus's campaign to keep and expand the service in Brighton and Hove.

He said: "It would be absolutely shameful to move it but I feel you could be screaming into deaf ears.

"I would like it to stay in Brighton. I appreciate that the demand has outstripped the space available - it does need enlarging and it can't remain on its present site but the problem goes back a very long time with the Royal Sussex County site."

Mr Porter said: "Breast cancer is a very emotive issue and rightly so. There have been considerable advances in the care of breast cancer and it's an important matter.

"They can't develop it on the site but it's a poor deal to shove it up to Haywards Heath.

"I think it would be very hard on the patients and Andrew Yelland, he's the leading breast surgeon and he has got to carry the can, whatever they do."

Mr Porter said the issues of the modern NHS made professionals in his position foam at the mouth: "My personal belief is this is a rotten deal for the patients and not in the interests of women."

Mr Porter said the best care should be carried out on one site, including radiotherapy.

He said to separate the two as the proposals planned to, placing the breast centre at Haywards Heath and the radiotherapy department at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, would not improve the service.

He said: "It's fragmenting the service. It is not, in terms of top-class health care, a good idea."

He blamed the proposal on Government incompetence and accused Governments of all parties of mismanaging the NHS.

He added he was pleased to have retired when he did.

He said: "Patients need to be able, so to speak, to pop in in their own community, rather than hiking up to Haywards Heath."

Mr Porter said part of the blame fell at the door of past politicians, who had ignored the medical experts when they said, as far back as the Sixties, a new hospital needed to be built in Brighton.

Mr Porter said: "The Royal Sussex County Hospital site was too small to be a comprehensive district general hospital and overall, hospital planning in Brighton has been a bone of contention ever since I came here in 1963."

Mr Porter, of Henfield, was himself involved in negotiations to build a new hospital serving the community in Falmer.

He said: "The development plan was difficult and expensive and we got within six weeks of the implementation and Barbara Castle, in her wisdom, stood on it."

He said if the transfer went ahead, in 20 years there would be calls to bring the service back together again, just as there were calls in the Eighties, which resulted in the creation of the Nigel Porter Unit.

Mr Porter said: "One has to cope with these situations all one's life and when you look at what is going on from the sidelines you do it with dismay.

"A great deal of damage has been done to healthcare through political ineptitude."

He said politicians did not understand clinical needs: "They don't understand medical ethics, they do not understand what makes a senior clinician and career doctor tick and they have succeeded in getting it wrong and alienating the people who do the work, more and more."

He was also saddened that patients from Britain were having to travel abroad for treatment, adding: "It breaks my heart. These people should be treated at home."