MOORS Murderer Ian Brady remains “chronically psychotic” and should remain in a hospital setting for treatment, his mental health tribunal heard.

The child killer suffers from long-term paranoid schizophrenia which does not “just fade away and die”, according to the clinician in charge of his care at high security Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside.

Brady, 75, was constantly paranoid about the Home Office and the Prison Officers’ Association, and believed hospital staff were acting as their agents.

His wish that he could “send cancer in an envelope” to one doctor was one example of anger which was the driving force for his paranoia, a panel sitting at the hospital was told.

Giving evidence, Dr James Collins said Brady also had paranoid beliefs about fellow patients who he thought were spying on him.

He wrongly believed that others were out “to get at him” and he responded by spilling shredded oats cereal outside one man’s door and smearing the chair of another with jam and honey.

But Dr Collins said he was not aware that Brady was paranoid before he was jailed for life in 1966 for murdering five youngsters in the 1960s, burying their bodies on Saddleworth Moor above Manchester.

He said he had managed to hold down a relationship with his partner in crime, Myra Hindley, a job and “sideline work” as a pornography dealer when he was a young man.