Critics likely to claim breaching of 4 million barrier is proof government is doing too little to help England’s hospitals

More than 4 million patients are waiting to be admitted to hospital in England to have surgery, the highest number in 10 years, the latest official NHS performance statistics reveal.

Hospital bosses said the figure, and a series of missed performance targets on A&E and cancer care, showed that the health service was now unsustainable. Shortages of money, staff and care outside hospitals to keep patients well meant that it could not cope with an ongoing and unprecedented rise in demand, they said.

“The current system is unsustainable. We simply do not have the resources to deliver what the public now expects,” said Danny Mortimer, the deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation.

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Just over 4 million patients were waiting to undergo non-urgent operations such as a cataract removals and hip replacements at the end of June – the highest figure since August 2007 and the second highest on record.

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “It is staggering that this government have allowed the NHS waiting list to rise over 4 million. A year of Theresa May’s mismanagement of the NHS has pushed services to the brink and left thousands more waiting in pain for routine operations.”

Gordon Brown’s Labour government first obliged hospitals to treat 92% of people waiting for planned hospital care within 18 weeks in 2007, under what is called the referral to treatment (RTT) care pathway, because too many patients were waiting too long. There were 4.1m patients on the first waiting list in August 2007, but the total came down to below 2.5 million in 2009 and 2010. It hit 3.5 million again last year and had been creeping towards the 4 million mark since.

NHS England said 3.83 million patients were on the RTT waiting list at the end of June, but that when estimates from six hospital trusts that did not submit ratified data were included, “the total number of RTT patients waiting to start treatment at the end of June 2017 may have been just over 4m patients”.

The recent upward trend follows the NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens’ decision in March to deprioritise the 92% target so that trusts could focus on improving their performance targets covering A&E and cancer care.

The monthly performance data for June and July, however, also showed that the target for hospitals to treat 95% of A&E patients within four hours had not improved and had not been met for two years.

Hospitals also failed to give the required 85% of cancer patients urgent treatment within 62 days of referral by their GP for the 39th time in the last 42 months. Macmillan Cancer Support voiced concern that hundreds of cancer patients a month were not getting urgent care as quickly as they should.

Professor Derek Alderson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the 4 million people on the RTT list was the equivalent of the population of Bristol, Liverpool, and Sheffield combined. “These statistics should act as wakeup call. This is the real life impact of an NHS under severe pressure. As our population increases and demand for the NHS grows, the waiting list will likely only get worse unless more action is taken.”

Making patients wait even longer than expected for surgery “can create prolonged pain, uncertainty, and be highly stressful for them and their family”, he said.

NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, warned that the dismal set of waiting time figures was ominous. “There is simply not enough capacity in the system to assure patient safety in the coming winter”, said Phillipa Hensch, its head of analysis.

Ministers and NHS bosses need to give hospitals an immediate cash injection of between £200m and £350m to help them overcome “the current capacity gap” or risk the health service not being able to cope in winter, she said.

The Department of Health declined to comment on the fact that 4 million patients were waiting for a procedure.

A spokesman said: “Thanks to the hard work of our NHS staff, patients continue to receive world-leading care, with nine out of 10 patients waiting less than 18 weeks and being treated in A&E within four hours. We continue to invest in the NHS, and as new research published recently shows, spending on the NHS is in line with other European countries.”

