Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to the report from the Public Accounts Committee on NHS finances, said:

“This report reveals that under David Cameron, alongside the A&E crisis, the NHS is now struggling with a growing financial crisis. Many trusts are in trouble on all fronts and trapped in a downward spiral, without enough staff and lacking the funds they need to stop the slide. This is a mess of the Government’s making and spells disaster for the NHS unless there is an urgent change of course.

"David Cameron inherited a financially-sound NHS in 2010 and this report lays bare the true scale of his mismanagement. Far from dealing with the deficit, he has created one in the NHS with his unnecessary reorganisation. It took focus off finances, wasted £3 billion in the process and dragged the NHS down. That is why the Tory MP and former Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell says that it was Cameron’s single biggest mistake.

"People will be appalled to see the bill for agency staff spiralling out of control. It confirms that Coalition cuts to nurse training places were a false economy on a grand scale. The Government should agree to Labour’s plans to recruit more doctors and nurses so that the NHS gets the millstone of the agency bill off its back.

"The Committee is right to call for a change of course and the remodelling of care, starting in the home and the community. This is at the heart of Labour’s 10-year plan for the NHS, backed by an extra £2.5 billion each year over and above Tory plans. Our programme of reform and investment will break this cycle of decline in the NHS and put the NHS back on a sustainable path.”