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

“All year, David Cameron has been ignoring warnings about the growing crisis in A&E. Now we are on the brink of a dangerous winter and the NHS is going into it in a worse position than last year, with fewer nurses, beds and Walk-In Centres.

“Patients left waiting on trolleys for hours in end or held in the back of queuing ambulances will find it hard to understand how Cameron and his Ministers are still denying that England’s A&Es are in crisis.

“Ministers’ cuts to social care have left millions of older people without adequate home care and at risk of hospitalisation. They have closed a quarter of NHS Walk-in Centres and left people with no alternatives to A&E. The decision to scrap NHS Direct is one of this Government’s worst acts of vandalism. They have replaced nurses with call handlers and computers that say ‘go to A&E’. It was a major mistake that Cameron needs urgently to put right.

"2013 has been the worst year in a decade in A&E and David Cameron’s fingerprints are all over the growing crisis. It is yet more proof that you cannot trust the Tories with the NHS.”

Ends