THE chronically underfunded NHS is collapsing and doctors are being forced to apologise to patients because they cannot provide adequate care, the British Medical Association (BMA) warned today.

Dr Phil Banfield of the doctors’ union described the “frighteningly common situation where dying patients are forced to sleep in a corridor or on a chair while hospitals are falling apart and ambulances are stacked outside emergency departments.”

Addressing the opening day of the union’s annual conference in Liverpool, Dr Banfield, who chairs the BMA council, argued that the health service’s 75th birthday on Wednesday “threatens to be a wake.”