PROLIFIC sex offender Jimmy Savile was able to gain a “position of authority and power” at Stoke Mandeville Hospital due to the backing of Margaret Thatcher and her ministers, a damning new report found yesterday.

Savile was “sponsored” in his role as lead fundraiser and project manager in the 1980 rebuilding of the hospital’s national spinal injuries centre by the Tory leader, report author Dr Androulla Johnstone said.

Her report also cites several meetings between Savile and Thatcher as the development of the centre took shape.

She said that placing powers in the hands of a celebrity fundraiser meant the department and NHS officials lost control of the project.

Savile abused 63 people aged eight to 40 connected to Stoke Mandeville hospital between 1968 and 1992, Dr Johnstone’s report found.

Shockingly, the report found the only formal complaint made — in 1977 by a victim’s father — should have led to Savile’s suspension but was ignored by hospital management and went unreported to police.

The report found that Savile had “virtually unrestricted access” to clinical areas and patients during the 1970s and ’80s.

A separate report investigating 41 hospitals, a children’s home and a hospice found the free access he was given offered him the “opportunity to commit sexual abuses on a grand scale for nearly 50 years,” its author Kate Lampard said.

Ms Lampard warned that NHS hospitals remain at risk due to inadequate checks on staff and volunteers and services should be “alert to predatory sexual offenders” such as Savile.

Responding to the reports, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the Commons: “Never again must the power of money or celebrity blind us to repeated clear signals that some extremely vulnerable people were being abused.

“People were either too dazzled or too intimidated by the nation’s favourite celebrity to confront the evil predator we now know he was.”