The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has skyrocketed to another record high, official figures show.
As the NHS crisis deepens, official statistics show that one in nine people (6.48million) were queuing for elective operations such as hip and knee replacements and cataracts surgery by April — up from the 6.36m stuck in March.
There are now 323,093 who have been waiting for more than a year for their operation, up 5.5 per cent, and 12,735