The NHS minister, Philip Dunne, has been accused of “belittling” the beds crisis by telling MPs that patients who need to be admitted can sit on seats in A&E units while they wait for a bed.

Philip Dunne was responding to the disclosure that patients have been forced to sleep on the floor in at least one hospital because the NHS’s beds shortage was so acute.

Doctors’ associations and Labour seized on Dunne’s remark, which he made in answer to an urgent question in the House of Commons about how the NHS was managing the winter crisis.

“The seats comment sounds flippant and belittling of the problem that exists,” said Dr Nick Scriven, the president of the Society for Acute Medicine, which represents hospital doctors specialising in acute and general medicine.

“If that is what he truly thinks, it shows a worrying lack of appreciation of reality in our emergency departments and acute medical units.”

Q&A Why is the NHS winter crisis so bad in 2017-18? Show Hide A combination of factors are at play. Hospitals have fewer beds than last year, so they are less able to deal with the recent, ongoing surge in illness. Last week, for example, the bed occupancy rate at 17 of England’s 153 acute hospital trusts was 98% or more, with the fullest – Walsall healthcare trust – 99.9% occupied. NHS England admits that the service “has been under sustained pressure [recently because of] high levels of respiratory illness, bed occupancy levels giving limited capacity to deal with demand surges, early indications of increasing flu prevalence and some reports suggesting a rise in the severity of illness among patients arriving at A&Es”. Many NHS bosses and senior doctors say that the pressure the NHS is under now is the heaviest it has ever been. “We are seeing conditions that people have not experienced in their working lives,” says Dr Taj Hassan, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. The unprecedented nature of the measures that NHS bosses have told hospitals to take – including cancelling tens of thousands of operations and outpatient appointments until at least the end of January – underlines the seriousness of the situation facing NHS services, including ambulance crews and GP surgeries. Read a full Q&A on the NHS winter crisis

Dunne was responding to Labour MP Tracy Brabin, who described how one of her constituents had taken photographs of people “sleeping on the floor” in Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield, Yorkshire as winter pressures led to severe overcrowding.

“These were poorly people in chairs waiting for hours, not being given a bed or a trolley,” she said. “What I didn’t hear in his response was an apology. Is now the time for the minister to apologise to those affected?”

Dunne replied: “[Brabin] will have heard last week the apology from the secretary of state [Jeremy Hunt] to those patients who are having operations postponed, and I absolutely am prepared to apologise today to those patients who are not able to be treated as quickly as we would like them to.”

He added: “There are seats available in most hospitals where beds are not available and I can’t comment individually what happened in her case but I agree with her it’s not acceptable.”

Brabin said Dunne’s remark was “appalling and ignorant” and showed ministers were out of touch with how bad the situation was facing hospitals.

Nurses leave packed A&E units to treat patients in ambulances Read more

“This is an appalling and ignorant remark from a minister entirely out of touch with the reality of the NHS winter crisis,” said Justin Madders, the shadow health minister.

“Placing sick patients in chairs because of acute bed shortages is clearly not acceptable in the 21st century. And yet with numerous trusts this winter at times reporting 100% bed occupancy, hospitals simply cannot cope and are being forced into these intolerable situations.”

Hospitals are supposed to have no more than 85% of their general and acute beds filled at any one time, in order to ensure patient safety, for example by minimising the spread of potentially fatal infections such as MRSA. However, this winter has seen some hospitals hit 100% bed occupancy and many others become 98% or 99% full as they struggle to cope with a sudden influx of patients, many with breathing problems.

The NHS-wide lack of beds and A&E crisis has forced NHS England to tell hospitals to postpone tens of thousands of planned operations, and even outpatient appointments, until the end of February.