CAMPAIGNERS urged Labour to halt NHS outsourcing and urgently invest in the service and its staff today after a report ranked Britain’s hospital care among the worst in high-income nations.

The Health Foundation revealed that long hospital waits left Britain among the “poorest-performing” in a survey of 10 countries.

It found that 11 per cent of people were waiting a year or more for a specialist appointment, while 19 per cent were waiting the same amount of time for non-emergency surgery. Only Canada reported similar figures.

It highlighted that waiting times for specialist appointments had risen more sharply than any other country – with 61 per cent waiting for more than four weeks last year, up from 14 per cent a decade earlier.

The report comes as waiting lists in England increased for the third consecutive month, with an estimated 7.62 million treatments waiting to be carried out at the end of June.

The analysis was based on the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Policy Survey, which collected the opinions of 21,000 individuals from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the US and Britain.

Public ownership campaign group We Own It lead campaigner Johnbosco Nwogbo pointed out that in 2013, the Common Wealth fund ranked Britain the best healthcare system in the world.

“If anyone thinks it is a coincidence that our NHS started sliding down that list after the NHS was opened to more privatisation, they need to look again at the facts. 

“Private firms have taken out around £6.7 billion, or £10 million per week, in profits from the NHS since 2012. 

"The evidence that the privatisation approach has comprehensively failed is now amply available. 

“The question is whether the Labour government will learn from it and reverse NHS outsourcing and cuts. 

“Or whether they will go the way of the ideologue and offer even more privatisation as the solution to the problems caused by privatisation.”

Co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public Dr Tony O’Sullivan said: “The health crisis by the end of the 1990s was solved by the NHS over the next decade, funded at least close to comparable European countries by 2009. 

“NHS capacity meant 95 per cent of people were treated in A&E within four hours. 92 per cent of hospital referrals were treated within 18 weeks. 

“This was the NHS delivering and was not down to the failed Blairite independent sector treatment sectors — an expensive failure, yet whose legacy was to allow private companies to park their tanks on the NHS lawn. 

“To end the slide down international tables, Labour has to invest urgently in staff, equipment and buildings and learn the lessons of the 2000s.”