WARRINGTON North MP has hit out at the Government’s plans for the NHS after figures showed Warrington Hospital is £3million in the red.

Hospital bosses say finishing the financial year with a £2.8million deficit was better than planned.

Mrs Jones said the hospital is not ‘alone’ in facing financial problems and says the current re-organisation by the Goverment is the ‘biggest mistake on the NHS’.

She added: “The government has lost grip of the NHS’s finances.

“A third of hospitals, including our own, are reporting deficits, putting patient care at risk, with longer waits at A&E, cancelled operations and waits for cancer tests and treatments also increasing.

“ The fact that ministers are having to put more money in to tackling a summer crisis in A&E and the growing backlog of operations shows how desperate the situation now is.“

Mel Pickup, chief executive of Warrington and Halton Hospitals, said : “We finished the financial year with a deficit of £2.8m deficit, which was better than planned and put into context amounts to less than 1.4 per cent of our overall budget of £210 million.

“Our regulator, Monitor, is satisfied with this and our plans to move back into surplus on a managed way over the next two years.

“The important message is that we are in control of our finances and we continue to modernise our services - investing in more staff, new equipment and upgrading our buildings and services to deliver better quality to our patients.

“For example, we grew our workforce last year investing in more frontline staff and have seen new facilities like our Forget Me Not dementia care ward open in recent weeks.”

David Mowat, Warrington South MP, said: "The deficit would be a great deal worse had Warrington not seen the biggest percentage rise, in its allocation, of any health authority in the north of England.

"The Conservative-led Government is also pushing ahead with a national funding formula which will benefit areas like Warrington.

"Both of these are issues which I have campaigned on since being elected.”