Three top Bradford health chiefs knew women with breast cancer were not being given the best available treatment, a BBC programme has claimed.

Dr John Philip, the former director of the Pennine Breast Screening Service, spoke publicly for the first time about his concerns in an edition of Panorama which was broadcast last night.

In the programme Dr Philip said women undergoing pioneering surgery for breast cancer in the early 1990s were treated differently in Bradford.

He said he passed his concerns on to the deputy director of public health in the district, Dr Liz Kernohan. By 1995 he had also told David Jackson, then Bradford Teaching Hospital Trust's chief executive and its medical director, Dr Michael Smith, that women were at risk.

He said far fewer women were being given radiotherapy - a critical part of their treatment, compared with other women in Yorkshire diagnosed under the NHS breast screening programme.

"I always felt that I could have done more to put right what I believe was a wrong in Bradford and I did my best but I failed," said Dr Philip.

"In Bradford I noticed that only two per cent of the women had received radiotherapy - I would have estimated that at least 50 per cent of those women should have received radiotherapy."

It was retired Bradford breast surgeon Jeff Price's practices that came under fire throughout the programme.

The allegations centre on a report by Professor Michel Coleman, who studied information on 28,000 women with breast cancer treated in Yorkshire hospitals between 1982 and 2003.

His analysis identified Mr Price's team as having a lower than average rate of referral for radiotherapy following surgery to remove a lump.

Former Bradford breast surgeon Robert Phipps was shown claiming he was aware of a number of women whose cancer came back following surgery. He was sacked by the Trust in 2000 for lying on his CV.

The programme-makers allege about 150 women were put at a 20 per cent higher risk of the cancer returning because of this. Thirty to 40 more women treated by the team died than expected, they said.

There were no individual case histories in the documentary because its makers do not know who the women are due to patient confidentiality.

But Prof Coleman's conclusions were dismissed as "bad science" by Dr John Wright, the Trust's clinical director, in a robust defence of the hospital's practices. "I don't accept the report as it stands, it's deeply flawed," he said.

He told Panorama that Mr Price was identified as having a lower than average survival rate for a five-year period but further analysis of case notes had found no cause for concern.

An internal audit by the Trust into 1,000 case notes between 1995 and 2000 identified clinical reasons for those women not referred for radiotherapy. Of all these women there were four cases of cancer returning.

But Dr Chris Bradley, lead clinician of cancer services at the Trust, told how the Trust was "out of step" with other hospitals in Yorkshire when he began working there in 1993.

"There is a risk they might have had a larger number of recurrences. They will have however been spared the toxicity of radiotherapy," he said.

In 1995 the Yorkshire Cancer Registry published a report based on thousands of breast cancer patients treated between 1976 and 1992. It named Bradford as having the lowest radiotherapy rate in all but three of those 17 years.

Dr Bradley told Panorama practices were "changed substantially" in 1994 and by the following year were "already coming pretty close in line". The programme-makers claim it took until at least 1999 to bring the Bradford rates in line.

As reported in Saturday's Telegraph & Argus, the Trust has set up a helpline as a precautionary measure. The number is (01274) 365922.