GOVERNMENT troubleshooters have been called in as the crisis deepens at the Royal United Hospital, Bath.

In the last week two independent reports have revealed the hospital is in massive debt and had released inaccurate waiting list figures.

This comes after health secretary Alan Milburn told the House of Commons only two patients in the country had been waiting more than 15 months for an operation, only for it to be revealed that both were being kept waiting by the RUH.

One of last Friday's reports revealed the hospital is more than £17m in debt after predicting that it would be only £4m in the red.

The second of the two reports, both commissioned by the trust in November last year, found that in March last year the trust reported that 122 outpatients had waited more than 13 months for an appointment, when the actual figure was more than 2,000 people.

In the wake of the crisis, the trust's chairman Gerald Chown has stepped down and financial director Martin Dove has been put on suspension with pay.

A team from the Directorate of Health and Social Care, which is responsible for health care in the south of England, is to be sent in to the hospital to tackle the crisis.

North Wiltshire MP James Gray said he was not surprised by the outcome of the reports.

He said: "Over five years as MP, I have had endless cases of people with very long waits."

He said he became suspicious of the figures when the hospital claimed only 13 people were having to endure long delays.

"It just didn't ring true, I have a filing cabinet full of cases."

He blamed the management of the RUH and the overall management of the health service for the problems in Bath.