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The Liberal Democrat MP spoke after a consultation on plans to remove doctor-led births from Solihull Hospital closed.
The move would leave only midwives to deliver low risk births, about 300 out of 2,700 that currently takes place at the hospital, run by Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HoEFT).
Doctor led-births were removed in January last year over NHS bosses’ fears that there are not enough doctors available to resuscitate newborns.
Mrs Burt said: “As the Prime Minister said, the aspiration should be for more local and more personalised services.
“However, in my local hospital at Solihull, the full maternity service has unfortunately been downgraded as a fait accompli, and instead of 2,700 births a year, we are led to expect only 300.”
She says this “hardly offers the choice, localism and personal service that we should seek to achieve anywhere in the country”.
The Government has published a Localism Bill which it says “will shift power from central government back into the hands of individuals, communities and councils”.
It said: “We are committed to this because over time central government has become too big, too interfering, too controlling and too bureaucratic.
“This has undermined local democracy and individual responsibility, and stifled innovation and enterprise within public services.”
Mrs Burt's official response to the consultation, which closed on January 24, said:
“The downgrading of maternity services at Solihull Hospital has been a matter of great public concern – and controversy – since it was first announced.
“The whole approach of HoEFT has for me been hugely disappointing, with the announcement that the unit was to be downgraded coming before any consultation with residents.
“Many residents and others, including myself, considered the whole matter to be a fait accompli.
"The public outrage when a consultation meeting finally took place in October 2009 led HoEFT to postpone any further meetings and the consultation until after the General Election.
“But meanwhile the maternity unit was downgraded, and we were told that instead of 2,700 mothers giving birth, it would only be ‘safe’ for about 300 mothers to give birth from then on.
“It seems to me that there can be no real consultation when there is only one outcome that it acceptable to decision makers.
"Why go through the motions when you have no intention of amending any proposals to take account of what local people think and want?”
She said she had raised the issue with the Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley.
Maggie Throup, the Conservatives’ failed Solihull candidate at the 2010 election, said before the poll: “Conservative policies back our campaign to keep full maternity services here in Solihull.”
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