Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of diverting hundreds of millions of pounds of NHS cash to private firms, as the two leaders clashed over winter crisis in the health service.

The Prime Minister was put on the defensive over cancelled operations and lengthy trolley waits in overcrowded casualty departments - facing taunts over her comment that “nothing is perfect”.

The Labour leader turned his fire on NHS funds being “siphoned off into the private sector”, a trend which has grown sharply under legislation passed by the Coalition government.

The NHS in Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s own county of Surrey had been forced to pay up to Virgin Care because the firm “did not win a contract”, he said.

“Under this Government, Virgin Care got £200m worth of contracts in the last year alone – 50 per cent up on the year before,” Mr Corbyn told Mrs May.

“The Prime Minister needs to understand that it’s her policies that are pushing the NHS into crisis

“Tax cuts for the super-rich and big business are paid for by longer waiting lists, ambulance delays, staff shortages and cuts to social care. Creeping privatisation is dragging our NHS down.”

But Mrs May argued that the increase in NHS cash flowing to private firms “wasn’t under the Conservative Government, it was under a Labour Government”.

And she told MPs: “This Government is putting more money into the NHS. We have seen more doctors in the NHS, more nurses in the NHS, more operations taking place in our NHS, more people being treated in accident and emergency in our NHS.”

The clashes over privatisation come after research found that the proportion of NHS contracts being won by non-NHS firms ballooned to almost 70 per cent last year.

Private care providers were awarded 267 out of a total of 386 contracts made available in 2016-17 – taking spending up by £700m to £3.1bn.

Virgin Care also sued six NHS commissioning care groups (CCGs) last year. after it failed to win an £82m care contract, losing out to an NHS provider and two social enterprises.

The figures, revealed in a report by campaign group the NHS Support Federation, undermine repeated government claims that private companies play a small role in NHS care provision.

In the Commons, the Prime Minister repeated her apology to the tens of thousands of patients who are having their operations cancelled this month, under an unprecedented order to local health chiefs.

And she again claimed the NHS was “better prepared” than ever before, pointing to more flu jabs, more acute beds made available and more doctors stationed in A&E departments.

But Mr Corbyn said Mrs May had implicitly acknowledged the NHS “crisis” by wanting to sack Mr Hunt – who defied her by surviving the botched reshuffle, with social care added to his portfolio.