An expert on infant sleep patterns has urged North-East parents to carry on sleeping with their babies, despite a warning from a coroner.

West Yorkshire coroner Roger Whittaker raised doubts about the wisdom of sleeping with a baby after the death of four-week-old Cerese Briggs.

He spoke out after hearing how the baby was accidentally smothered during the night by her mother, 20-year-old Lisa Briggs.

Mr Whittaker said he would be writing to the Government urging that advice should be given to parents not to sleep with their babies.

"The dangers of overlaying are so severe and so tragic I believe it ought to be stopped," he told an inquest in Bradford.

But Durham University anthropologist, Dr Helen Ball, who is in charge of a sleep lab project at the Queen's campus in Stockton, believes that the death was a freak accident and should not deter other families from sleeping with their babies.

Dr Ball said she was particularly concerned that stopping bed sharing with infants could discourage breastfeeding.

"Mothers who are breastfeeding need to be close to their babies so they can feed them easily," said Dr Ball, whose unit has filmed sleeping patterns of North-East families with babies.

They had found that breastfeeding mothers seem to be instinctively aware of their baby's position in bed.

"At least 50 per cent of parents sleep with their babies before it is a month old. If there was something dangerous a lot more would be dying," she said.

Any general ban on sleeping with babies would be "counter-productive", argued Dr Ball. The practice would continue but parents would be deprived of important safety tips about sleeping practices, she added.

Parents had to be aware that babies need to be in a safe physical environment, away from people who have been drinking or drug-taking and with a care-giver "who wants to give care."