Kinsella said he did not think the new incentives would help because the scale of the problem was too big.

“It’s basically a postcode lottery,” he said.

“There really doesn’t seem to be much good planning in place and quite frankly I don’t see how the surgeries, consultations, can cope with the workload.”

Doctors don’t currently have the resources to meet the requirements, he said.

He said the rules meant they needed to offer two consultations lasting 85 minutes each, then every four weeks a 20-minute consultation as well as a dietician appointment lasting 60 minutes.

“The scale and the size of the problem is known,” he said.

“I actually think we’ve got a solution, but we can’t connect the two because the NHS system can’t connect those two.

“Somehow we’ve got to find a mechanism that allows this drug, which has been so successful for so many people, to become more widely available.”