The doctor who speaks for hundreds of North-East specialists has described the situation within the NHS as "very bleak" after a major new survey suggested A and E patients were still waiting too long.

Dr Bill Ryder, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants and specialists committee in the region, said: "The picture is very bleak indeed. I don't think I am exaggerating at all."

He was commenting on a BMA report which flatly contradicts the Government over waiting times in hospital accident and emergency departments.

The Department of Health claims that nearly 89 per cent of people who go to A and E departments spend four hours or less in them, and that no-one now waits for more than 24 hours to be admitted to a hospital bed.

But a BMA survey of 160 A and E consultants, including North-East specialists, found that doctors working in the field did not endorse this view.

In one in five departments, patients had waited for more than 24 hours to be admitted in the week before the survey was carried out.

In one case someone had waited for three and a half days.

Half the consultants surveyed did not accept the claim that most people who arrived an A and E spent four hours or less in the department.

Dr Ryder, who is a consultant anaesthetist based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead, said he agreed that patients were waiting too long in the region.

"I would agree that the waits in the North-East probably averages well over three hours and I would agree that the situation is getting worse," he said.

The shortage of trained A and E specialists was "a big, big problem" which would not be solved overnight or by bringing in overseas doctors, he added.