A highly respected Norfolk GP has added his voice to a chorus of concern about the state of the NHS saying patients' lives are being put at risk by 'extreme wastage.'

After 40 years of practising Dr Ajay Kumar says excessive bureaucracy is coming between patients and clinicians with under-pressure front-line staff caught up in demoralising form-filling.

The issue of how to tackle the growing black hole in NHS recruitment and finances was one of the General Election's highest profile topics taking centre stage in manifestos.

But Dr Kumar, who had practices in Gorleston and Hopton, said the Government needed to set out its priorities and explain how the £8bn pledged by PM David Cameron by 2020 would be spent to assess whether it would make a difference.

He said: 'To me it appears that though money is there, there is wastage in the extreme, many priorities are wrong. In order to save money patients lives are being put at risk.

'There are two categories of people who man the NHS - clinical and non-clinical. Do we have the right balance? As the primary objective of the NHS is to treat the ill and infirm can we not look critically at bureaucrats and see if we can trim them and the money saved could then be diverted to patient care?

'I remember the 70s and 80s. With far less administrators both primary and secondary care ran smoothly and efficiently.'

Dr Kumar, who retired in 2007, said he had nothing but praise for the NHS which was 'absolutely superb and faultless' as far as treatment and medical care was concerned but that more clinical staff were needed, and paper work had to be reduced freeing medics to do the jobs they had qualified for.

In his day, an era that pre-dated red tape, the family doctor treated several generations, but the bond between GP and patient had been broken by successive changes and rulings, he added.

'The first thought that comes to a patient is to see a doctor or a medically qualified person. That is not happening now. In the 70s and 80s to the mid 90s this was the case. Now when people want to contact doctors they find they cannot get an appointment. This leads to patients turning up at A&E putting unnecessary strain on already stretched resources. This should not be the case.

'We have a recruitment crisis, GPs are taking early retirement and younger ones are emigrating to Australia and New Zealand. When someone goes to medical school and chooses a career as a GP they are looked down on because working in a hospital is seen as superior. Those that remain are taken away from patient care into form-filling.

'Another thing that worries me is the unacceptable level of death at the weekends. If someone is unlucky enough to be admitted on a Saturday they are 11pc more likely to die than on a weekday and it rises to 16pc on a Sunday.

'These days medicine is highly technical and expensive. It will be difficult to sustain unless we make more financial commitment. Although David Cameron has said £8bn will be going to the NHS he has not clarified where it will be spent. As a doctor my concern is the patient.'

He also tagged as 'immoral' hospital car parking charges and voiced his concern over the proposed relocation of three doctors surgeries in Gorleston and Bradwell to the James Paget University Hospital.

'When I came to Great Yarmouth in 1973 there was an older generation of doctors who in today's world would not be allowed to practice.

'It is not the same NHS that I came into but medicine is different and you have to move on. There is nothing permanent in this world. However medicine is changing for the better but we have to make sure we can sustain this holy cow as long as we can without putting the general population into hardship.'