Responding to today’s NHS performance stats for England, including those on the overall elective waiting list in June and emergency department waiting times in July, Dr Vishal Sharma, BMA consultants committee chair, said:

“These latest statistics are truly dire and show the scale of the challenges faced by the NHS and its staff, and the worrying impact this is having on patient care.

“While NHS England rightly heralds the progress made by hard-working staff on tackling the two year waiting lists, the overall number of people waiting for treatment continues to grow to record levels. And in June alone the number of people waiting longer than a year for treatment increased by almost 25,000.

“Meanwhile the situation in emergency departments in early summer is resembling the darkest winters – with a record number of patients waiting hours on end in ambulances and on trolleys to be admitted, and with many more waiting even longer before this to be seen at all.

“Workforce shortages, staff absences and a lack of capacity in social care to discharge patients into, all combine to create an unsafe environment for patients with doctors and their colleagues facing impossible dilemmas.

“Staff are doing their absolute best but the odds are completely stacked against them, and working at this level of intensity is completely unsustainable.

“Doctors are already being driven away by burnout and low morale as a result of repeated real-terms pay cuts. On top of this, absurd pension taxation rules punish doctors when they work additional hours or delay their retirement in order to provide more care for patients.

“The new Prime Minister will be inheriting a beleaguered health service with a deep-rooted workforce crisis that has been exacerbated by two years of a pandemic. Unless they listen to staff and patients on the frontline, and commit to taking urgent action to solve the workforce, resourcing and capacity shortfall throughout the NHS, these statistics will continue to worsen, patients will get sicker, and the health service will be plunged further into a crisis from which is may never recover.”