A staggering 293 million litres of water a day is leaking from cracked pipes

in Yorkshire, the T&A can reveal.

The new figure, released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, places the company the fourth worst for water leakage nationally.

Today Yorkshire Water, which announced pre-tax profits of £223.7m last March, was accused of failing to get to grips with the problem.

And one district MP has called for ministers to fine the company - a subsidiary of utilities giant Kelda - if it does not take urgent steps to

reduce the amount of water wasted.

Ann Cryer, Labour backbencher for Keighley, told the T&A: "I think these figures are absolutely disgraceful.

"Millions of gallons of water is leaking from the company's pipes and yet the customers are expected to grin and bear bigger bills.

"Yorkshire Water has got a responsibility to make sure its method of operation is sound. If it can't get its pipes sorted out, it needs to be

fined. If I failed to pay my bill, I would be fined. Yet the company is allowed to get away with wasting valuable water at a time when it is warning of a hosepipe ban.

"It seems to be all about making money. As long as the shareholders are receiving their dividends, Yorkshire Water can skimp on repairing the pipes."

Only Thames Water (915 million litres), Severn Trent (502 million litres) and United Utilities (500 million litres) had worse leakage rates than Yorkshire Water, according to official figures.

However, the Bradford-based company's pipes seeped 11 million litres fewer than in 2000-01 when 304 million litres were lost, said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The damning statistics were revealed by Environment Minister Elliot Morley in a Parliamentary written answer following a question by Labour MP Paddy Tipping.

A Yorkshire Water spokesman said: "Yorkshire Water takes its responsibility towards reducing leakage very seriously and figures reported by Ofwat show that we've beaten our leakage target for the tenth year running.

"The results show that in recent years we've succeeded in reducing leakage by around 45 per cent. This means we've saved enough water daily to serve both Sheffield and Barnsley.

"But we're not stopping there, a team of 130 work on identifying leaks in our network, seven days a week. We're also spending £157m to upgrade 1,200 miles of water mains which will minimise leakage where possible."