Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to NHS data released this morning showing an extra 75,000 patients on the operation waiting list to take the total to 3.1 million, highest in six years, said:

“With news that waiting lists have gone through the 3 million mark – and are now at a six-year high - people will see the growing gap between David Cameron’s spin at the Despatch Box and the painful reality for patients.

“Under David Cameron, NHS waiting lists and waiting times are getting longer by the day. People are being forced to choose between suffering in silence or paying to go private – the age-old Tory choice in the NHS. People who can see the NHS going backwards will today be justified in wondering why David Cameron threw the NHS into the chaos of a re-organisation when nobody voted for it.

“David Cameron promised to protect the NHS and keep waiting lists down. He has broken that promise and must urgently set out a plan to turn things around. Given that only yesterday he was claiming that waiting times were coming down, people will today see that his public statements on the NHS simply can’t be trusted.”