A LEADING North-East consultant has said he is on the verge of quitting because of the lack of hospital beds in the NHS.

Dr Bill Ryder, chairman of the British Medical Association's Northern Region consultant committee, said: "The acute bed situation in just about every hospital trust in the country is diabolical at the moment."

The consultant anaesthetist, who works at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead, said: "I have said over the past few days that if things don't rapidly improve I am just going to pack it all in, because I cannot continue to work in circumstances which do not allow me to provide the sort of quality of care that I want to provide. It is as bad as that."

He spoke out after the publication of a national BMA report about accident and emergency care highlighted the lack of spare bed capacity in NHS hospitals.

In the report, Dr Don MacKechnie, an A and E consultant and chairman of the BMA's A and E committee, said he feared that hospitals would struggle to reduce the waiting time for critically ill patients "unless the Government focuses on solutions to increase the overall in-patient bed capacity".

The report identified the lack of available beds in hospitals as the main reason for long waits to be admitted in casualty units.

"A and E departments are working under intense pressure and hospitals have very few available beds to accommodate sudden rises in emergency patients," said Dr MacKechnie.

Dr Ryder said the general situation was now so bad that it was affecting every hospital.

"Even hospitals which have traditionally not had major problems have a big problem," said Dr Ryder.

He said he fully agreed with the BMA report that the solution to the problem was more acute hospital beds in the system.

"There isn't a way of managing the beds better," he said.

A spokeswoman for Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Strategic Heath Authority said: "Hospitals within our area are busy, but coping.

"There are five per cent more acute beds in the system this year than there were last year. All trusts have plans in place to deal with the increased demand always experienced by the NHS this time of year."