More than 52,000 people waited over 24 hours for a hospital bed in A&E in north-west England alone last year and the number of patients leaving A&E without any treatment at all has tripled in just six years.

We work in this system and we see it every day. Nurses, porters, paramedics and doctors doing everything they can, often in corridors because the beds and the staff simply aren't there. This is the result of years of chronic underfunding and political choices that have left hospitals without the resources they need.