Government ministers have buried NHS statistics that show the service hurtling towards an unprecedented £2bn deficit to avoid overshadowing the Tory party conference, say top NHS officials.

One senior figure at the health service regulator Monitor said his organisation had been “leaned on” by Whitehall to delay its report, which shows that NHS finances are worsening.

Neither Monitor’s quarterly report on how the NHS is faring, nor equivalent data from the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA), have been published, as they usually are around the time of the organisations’ board meetings last month. Hospital trusts passed their information to the two regulators two months ago.

NHS insiders said it was “very, very odd” and significant that, in a departure from its usual practice, Monitor discussed the financial and treatment waiting time performance of the 152 foundation trusts it regulates in the private – rather than the public – session of its board meeting last Wednesday.

Bosses of NHS hospitals who were expecting to see the matching data for the non-foundation trusts overseen by the TDA, an arm of the Department of Health, are concerned that it is the first time that its board has failed to publish key statistics when it has held its regular monthly meeting.

Sources at the TDA and Monitor confirmed to the Observer that both organisations had been asked to delay publication, which means the figures will not appear until later this week or next.

The NHS is on a one-way road to privatisation Read more

They reject official explanations that the figures are not ready, as both reports were prepared for publication before the alleged intervention. “We are being leaned on to delay them and I have a suspicion that the sensitivity would be less after the Tory party conference,” said one Monitor boss.

While the TDA is part of the health department, Monitor is an arm’s-length body. The requests to delay publication were made verbally rather than via email, so they could not be proved to have occurred, insiders say.

The data is understood to show that hospitals in England ended the first quarter (April, May and June) £800m in the red – almost as big as last year’s £822m annual deficit – and that, without a major crackdown on agency staff, are on course to lose £2bn by next March.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is under pressure to explain why data that is in effect from the NHS’s own regular health checks has been withheld from publication, and if the delay has happened at the request of his department. Hunt recently told MPs on the Commons health select committee: “I know it will be tough, but I am confident that the NHS overall will balance its books at the end of the year.”

Heidi Alexander, the shadow health secretary, said on Saturday: “This appears to be a cynical attempt to suppress bad news ahead of the Tory party conference. It makes a mockery of Tory claims to be committed to transparency in the NHS, and leaves Jeremy Hunt with very serious questions to answer. These figures must now be published in full as a matter of urgency.”

The row comes as Hunt prepares to announce that a widely admired hospital boss has been appointed to undertake a powerful new role in the NHS to try to get its finances back in order.

Jim Mackey, the chief executive of Northumbria healthcare foundation trust, will be unveiled as the chief executive of a new body called NHS Improvement, which is being created by merging Monitor and the TDA.

Professor Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund thinktank, recently said that the NHS’s fast-ballooning deficit was leading to “panic” at the health department and “denial” at the Treasury. The service’s overspend was so large that it needed an emergency injection of £1bn in the comprehensive spending review to keep functioning, added Ham.

Without extra funding, he argued, the NHS would end up unable to cope, “most likely during the winter when many hospitals run out of money … With NHS hospitals unable to go bankrupt…, the Treasury will be forced to intervene or accept a rapid decline in performance.”

Monitor and the TDA issued a curt joint response to an inquiry about their unpublished figures and declined to comment on claims of political interference. A spokesperson said: “The figures for NHS providers’ financial performance in the first quarter of the year will be published shortly.”