Conservative parliamentary candidate Helen Whately has shrugged off any suggestion of a conflict of interest, after it emerged she works for the same consultants helping draw up plans which could see the A+E or maternity unit at Kingston Hospital removed.

Her website states she works as a management consultant specialising in healthcare, mainly in the NHS but does not mention her employer McKinsey.

The company is the biggest consultancy firm in the world, with a client list which includes banks, governments and corporations working in everything from telecommunications to mining.

McKinsey is the consultancy firm for Healthcare for Southwest London but were also paid to draw up a report on whether the sums for a new Surbiton Hospital added up.

Its advice on reallocating resources across south-west London, the yet-to-be-published report causing huge controversy at the moment, is the subject of a Freedom of Information request by politicians keen to find out what the company has said to NHS managers.

Mrs Whately said: "There is definitely no conflict of interest at all.

"I’m not involved in the south-west [London] work.

"It is a large enough organisation that people will be working in all sorts of different areas that I won’t know about."

And she said she would feel free to criticise McKinsey if its plans went against the interests of Kingston and Surbiton voters.

She said: "If that involves disagreeing with something my employer has done, that doesn’t really come into it."

She was a parliamentary candidate when she started the job and said her employers had not "even had the discussion" about how her fight to win a seat might affect her career.

The company boasts that it hires the best candidates with skills in "problem-solving, personal impact, achieving, and leadership".

Edward Davey, the sitting Liberal Democrat MP, was also a management consultant before he was elected, with Omega Partners.