LABOUR Shadow Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said the number of people dying while waiting in hospital A&E departments is “truly shocking”.

He was commenting on a report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine which found that 250 people a week died last year because of long waits.

Thomas-Symonds told GB News: “It’s truly shocking to see those statistics in the media this morning. These are people’s lives. We have been warning about this and the dangerous situation in A&E for a lengthy period of time.

“This isn’t a danger the Government has suddenly become aware of. This is happening, frankly, because of the lack of capacity that there now is in the National Health Service.”

In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Ellie Costello, he continued: “Our National Health Service, of course, needs reform, not least to be focusing on prevention, not simply treatment of illnesses.

“It also needs an immediate injection of cash to be able to get doctors and nurses working those extra hours to really bring the waiting lists down, to double the number of scanners, and also to try to deal with the crisis in NHS dentistry that exists and create 700,000 new appointments.

“This would be a real immediate priority for the next Labour government, if we’re privileged to form one.”

He added: “I really do worry that Conservatives just don’t understand the depth, the scale of what they have in the National Health Service.”