It comes after one of the main contractors, Accenture, pulled out of the Connecting for Health programme which will link GPs with hospitals.

NHS chiefs said the move would not cause significant further delays to the IT project.

Labour MP for Newcastle, Paul Farrelly, said the Department of Trade and Industry should carry out an inquiry.

Accenture has handed over �1.9bn of its contracts to another US company, Computer Sciences Corporation.

"The big question about this contract is whether in actually designing the system for the NHS it is too ambitious by half," said Mr Farrelly.