Heidi Alexander MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to The King’s Fund’s latest quarterly monitoring report, said:

“These findings lay bare the crisis facing the NHS and social care.

“With a difficult winter approaching, hospitals are dangerously full, short-staffed, and in financial crisis.

“Ministers have been warned on numerous occasions that cuts to older people’s care in the home will have a knock-on effect on the NHS. As support is withdrawn in the home, too many older people are ending up in hospital unnecessarily.

“Jeremy Hunt needs to acknowledge that cuts to social care are cuts to the NHS by the backdoor. He must now take urgent action to repair the damage the Tories have done to our health and care services.”