SNAP POLL: Would you pay for a better NHS?

Almost seven in 10 (66.81 per cent) nurses surveyed reported delivering care in overcrowded or unsuitable places like corridors, offices, converted cupboards and even car parks on a daily basis.

One disturbing incident recorded how a patient died in a corridor but was not found for hours.

Another patient suffered a miscarriage outside the ward because it was full, while nurses reported blood transfusions and intravenous drugs being administered in storerooms, toilets, staff offices and hospital car parks.

Another told of how a patient who had soiled themselves was changed in a storage cupboard because the hospital was too overcrowded.

The NHS was one of Labour’s top pre-election priorities. Since taking office, Starmer’s party has pledged £25.7billion more funding, and 40,000 more appointments a week to cut waiting lists.

The spending increase is largely funded by increased borrowing and tax rises such as the hike in Employers’ NI contributions, capital gains tax and inheritance tax.

British Medical Association chair of council Professor Philip Banfield said: “Corridor care should never ever be ‘the norm’ in any hospital and yet, as this report reveals, our patients are being looked after, not in beds, on wards or in proper cubicles, but in places which are unsafe and inhumane.

“Doctors, and now our nursing colleagues, are almost beyond despair as they struggle with the impossible task of trying vainly to look after scores of sick and dying people, left for hours on end in unsanitary and unacceptable conditions.”

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, defended the government’s NHS record yesterday, stating: “[Corridor care] became normalised in NHS hospitals under the previous government.

“It is unsafe, undignified, a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS and I am determined to consign it to the history books.”

But Mr Streeting added: “I cannot and will not promise that there will not be patients treated in corridors next year. It will take time to undo the damage that has been done to our NHS.”