Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to the British Medical Journal analysis showing the Government’s new NHS 111 line added pressure to England’s A&Es, said:

“2013 has been the worst year in a decade in A&E. It is a crisis of David Cameron’s own making and proof that you cannot trust the Tories with the NHS.
"It is clear that Cameron’s decision to scrap NHS Direct, and replace nurses with call handlers, has added to the pressure on A&E. It was a major mistake that he now needs to put right. He should implement without delay Bruce Keogh’s call for a return to an NHS Direct-style service with clinicians not computers making the decisions.

"Patients left waiting on trolleys or in the back of queuing ambulances will find it hard to understand how a Health Minister is still denying that England’s A&Es are in crisis. The Government’s complacency a danger to patients. Cameron must cut the spin and urgently get a grip.”