The Government was plunged into deepening crisis over NHS cuts last night after it emerged that three Cabinet ministers and four Labour MPs have joined local campaigns against hospital closures in their own constituencies.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, Hazel Blears, the Labour Party chairman, and Jacqui Smith, the Labour Chief Whip, were accused of hypocrisy by opposition MPs, health campaigners and unions for supporting government policies in Whitehall but protesting against their effects in their constituencies. They variously joined street demonstrations, handed in petitions or lobbied health ministers to stop NHS closures affecting the people who elected them.

Senior Labour MPs urged Cabinet ministers to keep quiet, while the Conservatives called on the ministers to join the Tories’ anti-cuts campaign.

Mr Reid, a former Health Secretary, joined a human chain protest this year against downgrading the accident and emergency department at Monklands Hospital in his Airdrie & Shotts constituency in Lanarkshire. He and the Labour MPs Tom Clarke and Rosemary McKenna also handed in a 45,000-strong petition to the local health board.

Ms Smith, MP for Redditch, and a former junior Health Minister, handed a petition to NHS bosses about plans to close the maternity ward at Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, and headed a delegation of campaigners who lobbied Ivan Lewis, a Health Minister, a couple of months ago.

The involvement of Mr Reid and Ms Smith in local campaigns emerged after Ms Blears and two local Labour MPs joined a protest against the closure of a maternity unit at Hope Hospital in her Salford constituency. Ms Blears said that she had raised the issue several times with Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary.

Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at the pressure group Health Emergency, said: “It’s rank hypocrisy — the ministers are sitting around the Cabinet table supporting the policy and then the next minute they are in their constituencies making political capital campaigning against it. It stinks. If the policy is wrong for their constituency, it is wrong for the country.”

Mr Martin added that it was a breach of collective Cabinet responsibility, but No 10 sources denied that it was an issue for the Prime Minister. The Cabinet ministers were protesting against the implementation of a policy, not the policy itself, government officials said. Furthermore, Mr Reid was protesting in Scotland, where health matters come under the Scottish Executive.

Brendan Barber, the TUC General Secretary, said that the Cabinet ministers were “reflecting the huge amount of public unease about the direction of change in the NHS”.

In England, 43 maternity units face closure or downgrading under a policy to concentrate services in fewer, higher-powered specialist centres. Ms Blears said: “I am representing the views of the people who elected me. My first and foremost job is to represent Salford and the people of the area and I will continue to make the case that Salford needs its maternity services.”