Halton MP Derek Twigg has blasted the government amid claims more than 150 people died while waiting for treatment at local hospitals last year.

A Freedom of Information request by the Labour Party found 154 people died in the Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust area while waiting for care, but the Trust warned the figures could be ‘misleading’.

Labour claims the data shows that at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, 48 people died having been waiting for treatment for longer than 18 weeks, and that there are currently 32,021 patients on the Trust's waiting list.

The NHS constitution states that patients should not wait more than 18 weeks for treatment, but almost half of patients in England wait longer than that to receive healthcare, the party claimed.

Mr Twigg said: "Record numbers of people are spending their final months in pain and agony, waiting for treatment that never arrives.
"The basic promise of the NHS - that it will be there for us when we need it – has been broken. The longer the Conservatives are in office, the longer patients will wait.”

He added: “Only Labour can rescue the NHS from this crisis and restore it to good health. We will train the staff needed to treat patients on time again, and reform the service to make it fit for the future.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said that cutting waiting lists was one of this government’s top five priorities.

He said: "Despite pressures from industrial action affecting patient care, we have virtually eliminated 18-month waits and are taking immediate action to bring down waits of over a year.

"We are going further to use the independent sector so patients can be treated more quickly - there are currently 116 open community diagnostic centres and 93 surgical hubs helping to deliver thousands more checks, scans and operations.”

A spokesperson for Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals, added: “First and foremost, we would like to apologise to our patients currently on waiting lists for treatment.

"Our teams are working incredibly hard to reduce waiting times, prioritising patients based on their clinical need. We advise any patients who are concerned about changes in their health to contact their GP or clinician."

She added: "The figures provided in response to a freedom of information request are for inpatients awaiting planned care and are not indicative of whether the wait for treatment was a contributing factor or cause of death. "The data could be interpreted in a number of different ways and therefore this analysis could be misleading.”