Clifford Mann on English hospital A&E waiting times

The NHS was "soaking up ever more pressure" with longer queues and the closure of 13 emergency departments in 10 years across English hospitals, said the president of the College of Emergency Medicine.

Clifford Mann said there was no scope for further reductions, as staff saw 14.1 million patients each year, which was on the increase.

He told Andrew Neil about "delayed discharges" and explained his problem with the much-used phrase of "bed blocking", as they looked at why some medical staff were leaving to work abroad.

The political headlines have been dominated by NHS statistics with Ed Miliband and David Cameron trading blows against rising waiting times, and at least a dozen hospitals so full they declared "major incidents."

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