The figure includes medical staff, teachers, council workers and directors of quangos. Many take basic salaries of double an MP's wage and some are paid more than the Prime Minister's £194,250.

There are about 460,000 public sector workers in the region, so more than one in 100 earns more than their MP.

The Yorkshire Post submitted a Freedom of Information request to every single council, health trust, emergency service and Government office in the region, requesting details of staff paid more than an MP – £63,291.

Responses range from Craven Council with one employee – its chief executive takes home a salary of about £100,000 per year – to Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which has 933 employees earning more than MPs.

In total 4,964 employees in Yorkshire earn £63,000 or above, not including the region's 56 MPs.

That figure is set to soar further, nine of the 62 organisations approached having failed to provide the information by the legal deadline.

Because many organisations failed to provide full details of the salaries received by employees it is impossible to work out the cost being met out of the public purse.

But even if every employee was receiving the lowest possible salary of £63,000 they would cost the taxpayer more than £300m a year.

Last night pressure groups and MPs said they were amazed so many people in the region were receiving the high salaries.

The average wage for people employed in Yorkshire stands at £23,077 – the second lowest of any region in England.

Rotherham MP Denis MacShane, who is campaigning to reduce public sector waste, said: "After the Tory years when public sector pay was uniformly pulled down I welcome the catch-up under Labour but enough is enough.

"I think that those whom the taxpayer are paying six-figure salaries might now be reasonably asked to mark time a little bit because as jobs are lost in the private sector everyone should share the burden.

"Now the money should go, not into pay and pensions for people earning £65,000 or more, but direct to helping children with special educational needs, patients who need more specialised drugs.

"Generally the money spent in the public sector should be seen to be helping the public, not the employees within it."

Assistant head teachers in North Yorkshire are being paid up to £67,833, deputy heads up to £80,523 and head teachers anywhere between £49,318 and £100,424.

Senior fire officers are also on high salaries, five area managers in the South Yorkshire Fire Service each earning at least £100,000.

The chief fire officer in the Humberside service is on a wage of £134,000.

Leeds Council has 69 officers each earning more than £63,000; Doncaster has 34, North Yorkshire 27 and Calderdale 21.

Hull has 30 employees earning more than an MP and its chief executive is on between £190,000 and £195,000 and a further five council officers earn between £100,000 and £140,000 each.

More than 4,000 doctors, surgeons and health trust officials earn more than their local MP, many significantly more.

In Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, for example, 24 members of staff are paid £65,000-£70,000; 42 receive £70,000-£75,000; 85 get £75,000-£80,000; 193 receive £80,000-£85,000; 110 get £85,000-£90,000; 117 are paid £90,000-£95,000 and 51 receive £95,000-£100,000.

But its highest paid employees get far more – two earn between £125,000 and £130,000; while one gets £135,000-£140,000; another one £145,000-£150,000; one £165,000-£170,000; one £180,000-£185,000 and the highest paid receives between £210,000 and £215,000.

The campaign director of the TaxPayers Alliance Mark Wallace said last night: "Despite these massively high salaries, services continue to struggle and the tax burden continues to rise. It is clear that some people are being rewarded for failure."

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said: "It is a large number, but we are talking about organisations employing large numbers of staff.

"They control multi-billion-pound budgets and we need to pay reasonable salaries to keep people out of the private sector," he added.