‘Tories must find adequate funding’

From Page 7 had to go hand-in-hand with the necessary resources if it was to ultimately work.

“Tory ministers often hold up Greater Manchester as an example of progress in integrating health and social care,” she said.

“However, Greater Manchester started out with a black hole in finances for both the NHS and social care.

“If the Tory government wants to make a success of devolution in Greater Manchester, they must also find adequate funding to tackle some of the challenges we face.”

Bury-born shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the region’s NHS was facing the same cash crisis as the national system.

“Eight years of financial squeeze, eight years of severe cuts to local authority social care budgets and eight years of failing to recruit frontline clinicians we need are all coming together now into a perfect storm - and it’s patients who are suffering the consequences,” he added.

Despite the pressures in A&E, Jon Rouse said two years of health devolution had brought significant benefits.

While some trusts are facing severe cash difficulties, the system as a whole is set to record a small surplus for 2017, he said, as it has the powers to move money around in a ‘mature’ way thanks to its devolved powers.

Cancer treatment targets had been met most months since the devolution deal, an achievement ‘which isn’t the case in most parts of the country’, he pointed out, and one that had taken ‘a huge amount of work’.

“On stroke care I think there’s a very good story to tell,” added Mr Rouse. “We’re now the highest rated acute services in the country - all of them are ‘a’ rated.

“So if you have a stroke in GM you can be confident that whichever of our stroke services you go to, you’ll get incredibly high quality care, which is something we are very proud of that’s been achieved.”

Health leaders are now drawing up a strategy to get 90pc of patients seen within four hours at A&E by the end of June as part of the improvement plan for NHS England.

A spokesperson for NHS England North said: “It’s our role to monitor performance to ensure patients are receiving the safe, high quality care they deserve.

“Many systems have faced challenges this winter and where this has been the case, we have worked with local organisations to resolve issues through appropriate mechanisms.”