Figures released this morning on the performance of A&E departments in England show a rise of more than 50 per cent in patients waiting over four hours to be seen compared to the same week last year.

The official target of treating 95 per cent of patients within four hours has been missed for 91 consecutive weeks, with performance falling from 93 per cent last April to 88 per cent last week.

The number increased from 19,485 patients for the middle week of April 2014 to 32,480 this year. Meanwhile, the numbers waiting on trolleys up to 12 hours for a ward bed has doubled from 3,551 to 7,434 patients last week.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said:

“These figures reveal a worrying slump in A&E performance in the last 12 months. Under David Cameron, A&Es across England are operating at their very limits and at least one - in Worcester - has clearly gone beyond them.

“It is essential that the Election debate now focuses on what the parties plan to do to stop this decline. The NHS needs more money this year and next, not a vague promise of an IOU in five years’ time.

“David Cameron caused this A&E crisis by making it harder to get a GP appointment, cutting care budgets to the bone and wasting £3 billion on a damaging reorganisation. If he gets back in, extreme Tory spending cuts mean they can’t protect the NHS and the crisis in A&E will get even worse.

"Labour has a better plan to turn around the NHS. We will ease pressure on over-stretched A&Es by recruiting 20,000 more nurses and giving people a guarantee GP appointments within 48 hours.”