THE Tories were branded a roadblock, “with nothing to say” to stop NHS strikes today after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed industrial action was the “number one reason” for the health service’s record-breaking waiting lists.

Blaming doctors from the British Medical Association (BMA), he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “The reason that waiting lists are going up is because we’ve got industrial action because doctors are on strike.

“We had stabilised it, it had stopped going up and it was forecast to start going down until industrial action started.”

Responding to his claims, NHS palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke said: “This is simply not true, as Rishi Sunak knows full well.

“By January 2020, the NHS waiting list had ballooned to 4.4 million — before Covid, before strikes, but after 10 years of brutal austerity budgets and NHS understaffing, a political choice to inflict pain on patients.”

Mr Sunak spoke as scores of striking junior doctors, radiologists and consultants travelled from across the country for a rally outside the Tory conference in Manchester.

Among a sea of orange BMA hats and jackets, BMA junior doctor committee co-chair Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “It’s clear that the roadblock here is the government.

“We’ve been waiting for Health Secretary Steve Barclay for more than 150 days since we’ve last spoken to him to try and restart negotiations and bring this dispute to an end.”

Mr Barclay was also condemned for failing to address the major industrial dispute and the crisis in the health service in his Tory party conference speech.

BMA council chairman, Professor Phil Banfield, said: “Steve Barclay’s speech reflected a government with nothing to say about the major challenges facing the NHS, and nothing new to offer to those who rely on our health service or who work in it.”