Health trusts in Sussex have been branded some of the biggest spenders on paid advisers in Britain.

Statistics reveal hospital trusts in Sussex spent more than £3 million on external consultants last year.

The biggest spending trust in the county was Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs five hospitals in the county and which forked out £2.7 million on management consultants in 2005/6.

This is despite struggling with a £6 million deficit, which The Argus reported earlier this year had led to the announcement of 325 job losses following advice from paid advisers.

The latest figures prompted MPs and medical professionals to call on the Government to stop excessive spending on external help.

Figures were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Grant Shapps, Tory MP for Welwyn Hatfield, who calculated that at current spending rates, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust was on course to throw a total of £3.6 million at advisers by the end of the 2006/7 financial year - more than any other trust in the country.

However, the figure in a report by Mr Shapps was disputed by the trust which said it was expecting to spend about £1.6 million in the next year.

That would still represent a significant increase since 2004/5, when the trust's consultancy bill came to a £340,542 and would place it among the highest-spending trusts in the country.

Nicholas Soames MP, who is fighting proposals to downgrade the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, said: "Consultants do have a good role to play but when you're in such a mess financially it is a hell of a lot of money to pay out."

The Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, increased its spending on external consultants from £7,000 in 2004/5 to £363,000 in 2005/6. It has already spent £256,826 on advisers between April and June this year. If spending continued at the same pace it would pass the £1 million mark by the end of March 2007.

Worthing and Southlands Hospitals Trust, which runs Worthing Hospital, spent £111,959 in 2005/6 and has already spent £482,728 in the first three months of the 2006/7 financial year. If continued, it would lead to an annual bill of almost £2 million.

David Dumigan, Director of Finance at Brighton and Sussex Universities Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "The figure of £3.6 million in this report is wrong and was not provided by the trust. The MP who compiled this report asked how much the trust had spent in this financial year to date.

"We provided a figure which he has multiplied by four to project a total cost for the year.

"As the majority of the costs occurred in the first quarter of the financial year and are not planned to continue for the remaining months of the year, this calculation is misleading and inaccurate."

Nationally, the cost of external consultants has risen by 83 per cent over two years.

East Worthing and Shoreham MP Tim Loughton said: "In some cases, the advice these firms have been offering has amounted to creative accounting. All too often they come up with recommendations which are either ignored or require more administration."

Dr Paul Miller, chairman of the British Medical Association's (BMA) Consultants' Committee, said some trusts were "management consultant addicts".

He said: "I would like the secretary of state to stop the NHS wasting all this money on management consultants - it takes money away from patient care."

Mr Shapps said: "We're in a ludicrous situation whereby NHS Trusts battling monumental deficits are simultaneously hiring external management consultants and slashing frontline NHS jobs."