DOCTORS and nurses hit back at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for blaming NHS workers for rising waiting lists today, as the number of people waiting for treatment reached a new record high.

New figures from NHS England show a rise in the overall list, with more than 7.7 million people waiting for treatment as of July, plus more people facing long waits of a year or more compared to the previous month.

Mr Sunak made cutting waiting lists one of his priorities for 2023.

Today, he blamed NHS staff strikes for threatening the target and acknowledged that his pledge could be missed.

He told the BBC: “Obviously that is challenging, with industrial action, there’s no two ways about it.

“We were making very good progress before industrial action.”

But Professor Philip Banfield of the British Medical Association, one of the unions taking strike action, said that “doctors are not the barrier to achieving the Prime Minister’s pledge to bring it down, we are the solution.”

He said that the government “prefers to demonise its own workforce rather than to recognise the value of their contribution to the health of this nation.”

Mr Banfield said: “Doctors have worked tirelessly to do what they can with rising waiting lists for over a decade due to chronic underfunding, then saved lives through a pandemic in horrendous and often brutal conditions.

“You cannot run down the health service over 10 years, devalue the expertise of doctors and expect our resolve to stand up for patients to dissipate magically.

“Doctors don’t want to be on picket lines, they want to be treating patients.

“But they will not simply give up. Our message to [Health Secretary Steve] Barclay is clear: the ball is firmly in your court.”

Royal College of Nursing director for England Patricia Marquis said that patients can only be safe and treated when there are enough nursing staff to take care of them.

There are over 43,000 vacant nursing posts in NHS England.

“This is the result of a decade of underinvestment and devaluing of nursing which has put intolerable pressure on the health and care system,” Ms Marquis said.

NHS Providers director of policy Miriam Deakin said that the data is “extremely concerning” and that challenges including severe staff shortages and capacity constraints were hindering progress.