Almost 1,000 patients had operations cancelled by the Mid Yorkshire NHS trust which runs the hospital last year. And 470 of those were due to a shortage of beds.

The Mid Yorkshire Trust is topped only by Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, whose figure for cancelled operations due to bed shortages are 732, and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells which cancelled 605.

Kevin Hollinrake, Conservative parliamentary candidate for the Dewsbury and Mirfield area, said the party requested information on operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons through the Freedom of Information Act.

Out of 170 trusts, 123 released figures for their cancellations. Overall the Mid Yorkshire Trust ranked 14th worst for cancelling procedures.

Mr Hollinrake said it was totally unacceptable the figures were so high. He said: “Dewsbury hospital staff are doing the best they can, but how can they plan patients’ care properly when they are continually hampered by the staggering £80m debt that they have been faced with and by Labour’s top-down targets? ”

The figures show 68 patients had their operations cancelled more than once, with some having their procedure put back up to four times.

Problems with operating theatre bookings accounted for 179 cancellations and 163 because of staffing problems. A further 94 were cancelled because another patient took precedence.

Angie Watson, chief operating officer at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We are committed to reducing the number of operations that we postpone as we know how distressing this is for patients. We are taking this issue extremely seriously.

“Like many hospitals across the country that care for seriously ill patients, we have to balance the needs of patients who require planned surgery with those that are admitted to our hospitals in an emergency.

“Our hospitals are very busy and over 1,000 patients need emergency treatment each week. We do not take decisions to postpone any operation lightly.”