A former Conservative health secretary has said it was unfair for Downing Street to hint that the NHS England boss, Simon Stevens, was to blame for the winter crisis gripping the health service.

Stephen Dorrell, now chair of the NHS Confederation, issued the rebuke after Stevens told MPs on Wednesday that Theresa May was “stretching it” by saying the health service had got more money than it had requested. His intervention came as new figures revealed the extent of the strain already on the system before the Christmas period.

Sources close to May had suggested to the Times that Downing Street thought Stevens was “not enthusiastic” and was annoyed by his political interventions, particularly on social care funding. The prime minister’s spokeswoman denied relations were frosty, saying May had full confidence in Stevens.

Dorrell said he believed that any allegations of political interference, and the insistence that the NHS had received the funding it had requested, were not fair to Stevens.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I do think it is unfair on him, because he’s made it clear from the beginning … He set out, he is the author of, the five-year forward view; he is the author of the government’s policy of the health service as part of a broad range of public services.



“He’s been the strong advocate of the need to integrate, to change the way we deliver health and care in our communities in order to deliver more joined-up services with proper emphasis on care as well as on the essential elements of acute medicine.”

Dorrell said the government “should be addressing the evidence about what is happening on the ground rather than engaging in a rather high-profile discussion about, frankly, what sound to the public like telephone numbers of public expenditure”.



Later on Thursday, the NHS Confederation warned that the NHS had reached a “tipping point” and that it was time the Government accepted that “limited investment” had “consequences”. The November figures revealed acute problems with delayed discharges - where patients are medically fit to leave hospital but are stuck in beds due to problems arranging care in the community. This impacts on A&E as hospitals struggle to find beds for incoming patients.

Snapshot figures on delayed discharges at midnight on November 24 show there were 6,825 people waiting to be discharged - the highest on record, and up 22% on the figure for November 2015 (5,573). Trolley waits of over four hours after a decision has been made to admit the patient totalled 52,769 - the second highest figure on record and 54% higher than November 2015. Waits of over 12 hours totalled 456 - again, the second highest figure on record, and 16 times higher than the number for November 2015.

The proportion of people seen at A&E within four hours in November was 88.4%, against a 95% target, and lower than the 91.3% in November last year. November’s figure of 88.4% is the lowest since March 2016 (87.3%).



Tim Gardner, senior policy fellow at the Health Foundation, said: “The NHS has begun this winter in a worse position than at any time over the last five years.



“The NHS is being squeezed between rising cost pressures and an underfunded social care system that is reaching breaking point.”

Speaking to the Commons public accounts committee on Wednesday, Stevens said “there are clearly very substantial pressures, and I don’t think it helps anybody to try and pretend that there aren’t”. He pointed that out the extra £10bn the government had referred to was being granted over six years, meaning the health service had less than it had asked for in its five-year-plan.

Stevens even appeared to take aim at May’s experience as home secretary, saying that dealing with challenges posed by an ageing population was “quite different to the criminal justice system”.



The row came as it was reported that at least 23 NHS trusts in England had declared a black alert in the past week, while freezing temperatures are expected to exacerbate the strain on the UK’s overstretched hospitals and heath services.



On Wednesday, May said claims by the Red Cross that the health service was suffering a humanitarian crisis were “irresponsible and overblown” in a series of clashes with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, over the issue. “Our NHS, Mr Speaker, is in crisis, but the prime minister is in denial,” Corbyn said.

The shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, published a letter he sent to May about Stevens’ performance, asking if she agreed with his assessment of funding levels and the effects of cuts to social care.

“Failure to take Simon Stevens’ warnings seriously would risk deepening a crisis that has already pushed the NHS to breaking point,” he wrote.