Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to the report on A&E attendances from the Health and Social Care Information Centre, said:

“These embarrassing figures expose a year of spin and excuses on A&E from David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt. They prove that A&E has got steadily worse on their watch and blow apart repeated attempts to evade responsibility for the current crisis.

“They have diverted attention from the real causes of the pressure and allowed this crisis to deteriorate, putting spin before patient safety in an appalling abdication of responsibility.

“David Cameron broke his promise of ‘no top-down re-organisation’ - and threw the NHS into chaos. Under him, it has got harder to get a GP appointment after he scrapped Labour’s guarantee of an appointment within 48 hours. Add to that deep cuts to social care support and the closure of a quarter of NHS Walk-in Centres, you have all the ingredients for the current A&E crisis.

“David Cameron’s fingerprints are all over the extreme pressure facing A&E departments and his response is simply one of 'crisis, what crisis?’. The longer he ignores the warnings, the more people will conclude that the NHS is simply not safe in his hands.”