A&E: record numbers waiting over 4 hours

Adding insult to injury amid the NHS winter crisis, new figures have revealed an all-time high for the share of accident and emergency attendees waiting longer than four hours to be seen to. Last month, only 77.3 percent of people going to A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged in less than four hours - a far cry from the 92.4 percent in December 2010.

Answering questions on the topic, Prime Minister May said that a flu epidemic was partly to blame for the exceptional pressure currently on the health service, adding "We have put more funding into the NHS for these winter pressures. We’re putting more funding into the NHS overall. But, in terms of these winter pressures that we see the NHS under, there have been a number of measures that we’ve taken that have helped”. Despite this extra funding, NHS Providers, which represents most of the NHS trusts in England, has told health and social care secretary Jeremy Hunt that the service needs £20 billion more than currently budgeted if it is meet the demands it is facing and to deliver the constitutional standards of care in the future.