Doctors warned yesterday that plans to make the NHS a “seven-day” service risk spreading dwindling resources thinner unless more cash is found.

NHS England medical director Bruce Keogh has declared the plan to deliver operations and tests from Monday to Sunday a “number-one priority.”

But British Medical Association chairman Dr Mark Porter said that given current budgets the proposals, which follow a long-running media campaign, would simply see a “diversion of services” rather than an expansion.

“It’s not realistic to carry on doing what we are doing at the moment and then add a new service on top of it within existing resources,” he warned.

“If the decision is taken to put half a dozen outpatient clinics on a Sunday afternoon then they have to be taken from somewhere else — that is, they won’t be on on a particular day during the week.”