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TWO million people will face hospital waits of over four hours if the Tory NHS “crisis” continues for another five years, Labour warned yesterday.
Accident and emergency departments have now missed the government’s target of seeing 95 per cent of patients within four hours for 91 weeks in a row.
NHS England records show that 1.4 million patients waited more than four hours last year — a 300 per cent increase since the Tories took power in 2010.
That will soar to two million by 2020 if current trends continue, according to the Labour analysis launched by shadow health secretary Andy Burnham in London.
Mr Burnham said the analysis showed that patients could not afford another five years of “falling standards, cuts and closures.”
It includes a shocking prediction that 600,000 sick people will lie waiting on trolleys in A&E every year.
“The last five years have proved one of the oldest truths in British politics — you simply cannot trust what the Tories say on the NHS,” Mr Burnham told an audience at a south London community centre.
“Under the Tories it’s got harder and harder to see your GP, A&Es are in crisis and there are now over three million patients on the waiting list.”
Labour’s projections also suggest that waiting times are set to soar in other areas.
The analysis warns that 20 million people would wait more than a week to see their GP if the Tories ran the NHS for another five years.
And over 100,000 operations would be cancelled every year, forcing the waiting list up to four million.
Hitting back, a Tory spokesman again accused Labour of “weaponising” the NHS.
He insisted that the Tories had “protected and improved the NHS” by investing £7.3bn and hiring 9,500 doctors and 6,900 nurses.
But the credibility of the claim was dealt a blow yesterday by a Health Service Journal report that four out of five hospitals were short of nurses.
Mr Burnham said that Labour would invest £2.5bn more than the Tories in the NHS every year, paid for through a mansion tax.
That would fund 20,000 more nurses and 8,000 more GPs, he said.
