NHS campaigners issued a stark warning to GPs yesterday to get behind the fight to save local hospitals or face carrying the can for the service’s collapse.

Local supporters swelled the ranks of 999 Call for the NHS marchers on the latest leg of their epic 300-mile journey from Jarrow to London.

As the marchers wound their way along the 14-mile route from Darlington to Northallerton, expert John Lister warned that GPs in England were sleepwalking into a massive NHS crisis.