Health bosses in Oxfordshire are forking out millions of pounds on paid advisers despite suffering from a financial crisis which threatens hundreds of jobs.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the county's health trusts spent a total of £1.13m on management consultants in 2004/5 and £1.1m in 2005/6.

Based on their spending record between April and June this year, when they paid consultants more than £270,000, the trusts are on course to throw a total of £1.08m at advisers by the end of the 2006/7 financial year.

Oxford City Primary Care Trust, which runs Oxford Community Hospital, spent more than £400,000 on external consultants in 2005/6 - up from £100,000 in 2004/5.

In the three months from April to June this year the trust has already spent nearly £160,000 on advisers.

If spending continues at the same pace it will pass the £600,000 mark by the end of March 2007.

Elsewhere in Oxfordshire, health trusts have begun to reduce their spending on consultants. The figures were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Tory MP Grant Shapps. Nationally, the cost of external advisers has risen by a staggering 83 per cent over two years.

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.

"With the bill for external management consultants having leaped by 83 per cent in the last two years alone, this Government needs to justify how spending £171m of taxpayers' money in this way can be right while frontline NHS jobs are being slashed and important hospital departments are being closed."