LABOUR shadow health secretary Andy Burnham launched a furious Commons attack on his opposite number, Tory Jeremy Hunt, yesterday after figures suggested 57 patients died after 999 calls were “downgraded” by an ambulance trust.

Mr Burnham accused East of England Ambulance Service of “cruelly rationing” callouts deployed from its emergency centre that saw care arrive late or never.

Fifty-seven people died in three months after the status of their 999 calls was reduced by the cash-strapped trust, figures released yesterday showed.

Calls made by terminally ill patients were among those hit by the decisions.

Mr Burnham demanded a full probe into the scandal that covers the period from December 2013 to February 2014.

“Evidence is emerging of services unilaterally abandoning national standards and putting patients at risk,” he said.

“Withholding ambulances from terminally ill people is the most cruel form of rationing imaginable.

“Will you today order a full independent investigation into how this happened and into every death or adverse incident?”

But the Tory clung to the claim that ambulance services were “doing well under a lot of pressure.”

“You should be getting behind the paramedics and the ambulance services and not trying to politicise the issue,” Mr Hunt complained.

East of England trust chief Anthony Marsh claimed that “no harm was caused to patients” through the decision not to deploy an urgent response.

But he added that he had “immediately launched an investigation and ordered the reversal of the changes” upon his appointment.