A HAMPSHIRE mum is taking the Ministry of Defence to court after a series of alleged blunders meant she gave birth to a severely-disabled baby while stationed in Cyprus.

Debra Crowton's five-year-old daughter Amelia needs round-the-clock care due to brain damage suffered during a harrowing five-day labour.

Amelia cannot walk, talk or use her hands. She is blind and epileptic.

Ex-Army sergeant Mrs Crowton, 41, wants compensation from the MoD whom she blames for sending her to a civilian hospital where she received poor treatment.

As the law stands, the MoD only has a duty to provide access to healthcare. If it considers a civilian hospital satisfactory, it is deemed to have fulfilled this duty.

Mrs Crowton is fighting to prove it did not.

Mrs Crowton said: "You give all those years of service and they treat you worse than an animal.

"Now, after an unsuccessful five-year legal battle, she has turned to Parliament.

Desmond Swayne, Conservative MP for New Forest West, highlighted his constituent's "horrendous" treatment during a Westminster debate.

Mrs Crowton, formerly a welfare officer with the Winchester-based Adjutant General's Corps, was 27 weeks pregnant when she was posted to Cyprus in September 1998. Because of her condition she objected but eventually flew to join her husband, Sid, 42, who is also in the military.

Five days later, she suffered serious complications. RAF nurses at Dhekelia camp, Cyprus, diagnosed pre-eclampsia and ordered an emergency Caesarean section.

Princess Mary's Hospital, a military facility in the town of Akrotiri, was unable to carry out the operation.

So Mrs Crowton, a nurse, was admitted to the civilian Archbishop Makarios III Hospital, Nicosia. Mr Swayne told Parliament: "The admission was attended by a certain amount of chaos, due to the language barrier and so on."

After some time she was assured she would receive an emergency Caesarean section that day.

Mr Swayne added: "She did not. She was kept in enormous pain, and despite her requests for pain relief she did not receive it. On the fifth day, she was strapped up and required to give birth naturally in what I can describe only as horrendous circumstances.

"Her husband was excluded despite requesting to be present."

The traumatic birth caused massive and irreversible health problems for Amelia.

Mrs Crowton, of Everton, near Lymington, was told her daughter was unlikely to live - and the hospital suggested an urgent baptism.

Against the odds the baby survived but Mrs Crowton, suffering depresion, was discharged from military service.

The family has since spent nearly £100,000 adapting their house and buying equipment to care for their daughter.

The legal loophole means Mrs Crowton can sue only the Archbishop Makarios III Hospital - but that is impossible because of problems of distance, language, and cost. Instead, she is taking the MoD to court to prove it failed in its duty of care.

Mr Swayne, a member of the Territorial Army, said: "Ought it to be the case that citizens are so much advantaged over our military constituents as a consequence of their being civilians rather than in the military, given the sacrifices that we expect and require of our military constituents?

"There should be a level playing field."

Armed Forces Minister Ivor Caplin pledged to study Mrs Crowton's case. He would not agree to a meeting but he said: "Wherever our service personnel are serving, we are totally committed to providing them with high-quality medical services that are as close as possible to those provided by the NHS.

"In Germany, UK troops and their families can be treated at designated hospitals, which are subject to inspections, contracted through the NHS."

The hospital in Cyprus was neither designated nor inspected by the Armed Forces, according to Mrs Crowton's lawyers.

After the debate, Mrs Crowton condemned the MoD for offering her no support. Her husband was not even allowed to borrow a car to take his wife to post-natal appointments, she said.

She said: "Amelia would have been a healthy child with a Caesarian section. Instead, I was treated like an animal and made to wait five days.

"I used to be a really strong person and this has made me ill, seeing what Amelia has to go through.

"It is a constant struggle to keep her alive and a struggle to have some sort of life.

"Our life was wiped out in that Cypriot hospital. All we ever wanted was Amelia."

She launched her legal battle with the help of James Bond at the Royal British Legion, and David Poole, partner and head of the clinical negligence at London law firm Simpson Miller.

Mrs Crowton is not just fighting for justice for her own famiy. She said: "Families of soldiers and wives of soldiers going to Cyprus are told there is a hospital and they think: 'That's fine.' I found the hard way it isn't.

"If I change nothing else, I just want to make sure that no other families suffer."