They also accused the Government of “short-sighted” staff planning over fears for the future employment prospects for junior doctors.

Paul Miller, chairman of the British Medical Association consultants committee, said that ministers risked destroying the NHS if they continued to waste money through schemes such as the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

He told the hospital consultants’ annual conference in London: “Care is suffering, jobs are disappearing, patients and staff are paying the price. If a patient gets worse instead of better with treatment, then it is time to figure out whether the diagnosis is wrong.

“Something is going very badly wrong with these health policies. It is time to call a halt.”

He denied that the funding deficit in England was caused by the new contracts for consultants. He said the deficits were centred on a few areas and were caused by “local service management and strategic planning failure”, often the result of political interference.

Dr Miller said there should be no more external management consultants brought in to tell clinicians and managers how to run their services.

He called for the NHS to be run by an independent body to “depoliticise” it. There should also be a halt to signing off any more contracts for further independent sector treatment centres with the existing centres integrated properly with NHS patient services, he said.

But Andy Burnham, the Health Minister, said: “Dr Miller is entitled to his views. But his skewed analysis is flatly contradicted by the NHS chief executive’s annual report. It shows that patients are receiving better quality care faster than ever before. It is the Government’s reforms that have delivered these improvements.”

Other BMA figures said that there was an “employment crisis” facing doctors at senior house officer level.

Edwin Borman, a consultant anaesthetist from the West Midlands, said: “In the next two or three years we are going to find that the total pool of people at senior house officer level wanting to progress their career is going to be in the order of 21,000 or 22,000 doctors, chasing 10,000 to 11,000 posts.” The consultants’ debate comes after Bernard Ribeiro, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said that scores of trainee consultants were stuck without jobs because of the NHS’s financial crisis.

But the BMA’s complaints were attacked by Neil Bentley, director of public services at the CBI. He said: “Doctors are central to delivering a better NHS, yet the BMA has resisted just about every positive reform in the last decade.

“Patients are benefiting from the new NHS hospitals built on time and to budget using PFI funding. Patients are benefiting from much shorter waiting times because of the additional capacity brought to the NHS by the specialist independent sector treatment centres.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health did not dispute the BMA’s estimate of NHS management consultancy costs. He added: “We only bring in consultants where they add to management expertise, not duplicate it.Overall we are reducing management costs in the NHS.”

Times Recommends

• Commons Speaker isolated over leaks row
• Promotion for PC who ignored desperate victim
• Britney’s X Factor comeback angers fans