Dr Dearden says GPs often have to wait several hours for an ambulance

Dr Andrew Dearden backed comments by the ex-interim chief executive of the ambulance service, that lives were being lost due to shocking failures.

Roger Thayne resigned because he said he was asked to make cuts when he wanted �35m needed to save the service. Dr Dearden said GPs can wait hours for an ambulance for patients and said to make cuts was "ludicrous".

Roger Thayne, who resigned after just eight weeks at the helm of the Welsh Ambulance Service, has told BBC Wales' Week In Week Out programme that lives were being lost.

The ambulance service says it is working hard at modernisation

After being asked to make cuts when he wanted investment in the service, he said he could not stay as he felt ashamed and he did not want to be accountable for a service that was failing so badly.

Chairman of Welsh GP committee of the BMA, Dr Dearden, said the problem had been "general knowledge amongst the medical profession for a long period of time".

"Ambulance waits in Wales can sometimes be as long as six or 10 hours after a GP requests them," he said.

"I think it's normal to say that if I order an ambulance and ask for it to be two hours, at least one in three will be extended to four or five hours.

"The longest personally I've had is a six-hour wait, the longest I know of is a ten-hour wait."

Dr Dearden told BBC Radio Wales there was "certainly a risk" of lives being put in danger by the long waits.

'Political time targets'

"Obviously I need a person in hospital within one or two hours and I can't them in for five or six hours, then yes - the chances are their condition could worsen and then of course it's possible a life maybe lost."

But he said the lack of ambulances was just "part of the problem" as blockages within hospitals while beds were found, often forced ambulances to wait two or three hours before they could discharge patients.

"If you can't find an ambulance then either you don't have enough beds or you don't have enough ambulances and staff - so to make cuts is ludicrous," the GP said.