Watch: Neil and Christine Hamilton in Mid Wales visit

Mr Hamilton and his wife Christine met members of Newtown Health Patient Forum on Friday last week.

The former Conservative MP, who was making his first visit to the region since being elected earlier this year, said he was "disturbed" to hear claims that residents lacked basic healthcare provision.

Joy Jones, leader of the health forum and also county councillor for Newtown, also spoke of the implications she fears losing the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital's A&E department would have on the people of Montgomeryshire as a whole.

She filled in the Hamiltons on the Future Fit programme, the restructure of hospital services in the county.

She said: "They called it Call for Action to begin with, to look at the service they provide in Shropshire, how to get a better service for less money, but sadly Powys wasn't included in that. Nobody from Powys would be at the meetings, I would turn up and be told this is for the people of Shropshire.

"Well we pay 15 per cent of SaTH's (Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust) income so we are actually very important.

"Then it got changed to Future Fit, and it's gone through turmoil after turmoil, decision after decision.

"They're looking at where to site Shropshire's only A&E. It's extremely important that it stays local to our border, Shrewsbury is central to where it covers."

Mrs Jones also voiced concerns at services being "drip-fed" to Telford's Princess Royal Hospital – including the women's and children's unit and the latest being the county's three remaining acute stroke physicians.

She also raised the plight of a Newtown mother, whose premature baby stayed in Telford but she was sent home because there were no beds for her to stay in.

"Newtown is suffering, Newtown is under health poverty, residents of Newtown feel they are being ignored and neglected daily," she said.

Other issues that were discussed at the meeting included ambulance waiting times after it emerged this week that Powys' response times were the slowest in Wales, problems with public transport due to rurality of the area, the region's stretched mental health services and the provision of minor injuries in Newtown which are based at the town's medical practice during daytime hours.

"I don't mind it being in the doctors but we need cover at night, our residents deserve proper healthcare cover in Newtown," Mrs Jones said.

"We are left high and dry, and I'm sick to death of it."

Mr Hamilton said: "It's a top down orientated system, everything is being centralised and regionalised. The Welsh Government is overwhelmingly Cardiff central, Labour MPs are in South or North Wales. We've had a Welsh Government for 18 years and they've had no interest in all that time."

"They think there's never going to be a Labour AM for Montgomeryshire or for Brecon and Radnorshire, so they think forget about it, so lets get angry at them."

During the meeting, Mrs Jones also spoke of her fears that convoys transporting wind turbine parts for work on the Tirgwynt windfarm, between Cefn Coch and Carno, and the Garreg Llwyd Hill windfarm, on the Black Mountain between Felindre and Llanbadarn Fynydd, will cause disruption to Mid Wales patients' journeys to hospital this summer.

Making his party's stance on renewable energy clear, Mr Hamilton said: "The Welsh Government is spending £73 million a year on renewables, imagine if that was spent on health services."

The politician pledged to be a megaphone to give Mid Wales patients access to the "decision makers at the top".

Dubbing it the "Newtown Cinderella Project", Mr Hamilton said he would relay the group's concerns to Vaughan Gething, the Welsh Government health secretary.