1.5m wait 12 hours in A&E

Anger at Tories over 'catastrophic' delays

- JOHN STEVENS

MORE than 1.5 million patients waited 12 hours or more at A&E in the past year.

Hospital chiefs last night said Tory ministers urgently need a plan to fix the overstretched NHS.

Shock data showed 1,540,945 A&E patients waited at least 12 hours before being admitted, transferred or discharged in the 12 months to the end of January

This equates to almost one in 10 (9.6%) patients, five times higher than the NHS requirement that no more than 2% of patients should wait 12 hours or more.

In January, a record 177,805 waited longer than that time in England, equal to 12.4% of patients.