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

“These findings are further proof that the Tories have completely lost control of the NHS’s finances.

“The Government’s cuts to nurse training places have forced hospitals to drain resources hiring expensive agency staff. This has left hospital deficits soaring and could lead the Department of Health to blow its budget for the year.

“Despite the scale of the cash crisis in the health service, Ministers are determined hospitals make eye-watering ‘efficiency savings’ which experts – and now NHS bosses – say cannot be delivered without putting patient care at risk.

“Jeremy Hunt needs to come clean with the public about the scale of the financial crisis in the NHS and what it means for patient care.”