COULD DO BEDDER...

667% rise in A&E patients waiting for hospital beds

NEARLY 560,000 more patients languished on hospital trolleys waiting for beds last year than when the Tories came to power.

That’s a 667 per cent rise since 2010. Labour analysis of new stats shows 641,963 patients had to wait in A&E for a bed for over four hours in 2018. In 2010 that figure was just 83,743.

The number waiting over four hours in A&E to be admitted, transferred or discharged last year hit nearly three million – up 510 per cent since 2010.

There has also been a 33 per cent jump in admissions through A&E as patients found it increasingly difficult to see their GPs.

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “The state of the NHS under the Tories is a total disgrace. They don’t even have a plan to get waiting times back under control.

“They have starved the health service of cash, cut it, privatised bits of it and allowed staff shortages to build.” Theresa May has promised the health service an extra £20billion by 2023. But with one in 11 staff jobs vacant and the NHS short of 40,000 nurses, senior doctors warn hospitals are facing a “near-on impossible task”.

Labour vows to increase NHS funding when Jeremy Corbyn is PM. Mr Ashworth added: “We will put in place a plan to recruit the staff we need.”

THERE was much hype last week over Theresa May’s 10-year NHS plan.

But when the PM is facing the bottomless pit of despair over Brexit, she’ll clutch at any positive headline she can get.

So she won’t like our headline today, which reveals a 667 per cent increase in A&E trolley waits since the Tories came to power.

Nearly 560,000 more patients faced more than four hours stuck in A&E after being diagnosed as sick enough to need to be admitted.

Meanwhile, one in 11 NHS posts is unfilled and the health service is short of 40,000 nurses.

It must not take another 10 years to remedy that.

WHEELY BAD Patients queue on A&E trolleys