A special military zone is to be set up in a new hospital for wounded Service personnel to keep them apart from civilian patients after complaints, including from General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, about treating wounded personnel alongside civilians at a hospital in Selly Oak, Birmingham.

Ministry of Defence military hospitals were shut after the previous Conservative Government decided they were not economically viable.

Troops seriously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have been airlifted to hospital in Selly Oak and the medical treatment of military patients has received widespread praise throughout the Armed Forces. Treating them in civilian wards, however, provoked considerable anger. General Dannatt made it clear he felt that mixing military with civilian patients in the same ward was not acceptable. Derek Twigg, the Defence Minister, said that a new hospital being built at Edgbaston in Birmingham will house the MoD’s Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, with civilian-free areas for military patients and their families.

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