UNIONS have called for an independent inquiry into the North West Ambulance Service after figures revealed a ‘dangerous’ rise in waiting times for emergency help for people with life-threatening conditions.

New figures have revealed that 37 per cent of the most seriously ill patients are not seen within the eight-minute target time, a rise of nine per cent since 2012.

This statistic was labelled ‘disgraceful’ by the GMB union, with region secretary Paul McCarthy also pointing to a 16 per cent shortfall in the number of paramedics needed at NWAS as he called for an independent inquiry into the ambulance trust.

Mr McCarthy said: “These disgraceful figures show tory tactics of underfunding and privatising the NHS are putting lives in danger.

“GMB members put their heart and soul into the lifesaving work they do for our health service but the Conservatives are cutting their feet out from under them and the result is dying patients are left with a desperately long wait for emergency care.

“Not every emergency call gets a qualified paramedic crew because there is a shortage of paramedics within NWAS and we question why this shortage has been allowed to grow to 16 per cent when the GMB has been saying to NWAS directors for the past five years that more staff both internally and externally need to be trained up.

“There needs to be an independent inquiry into NWAS to see why critically ill or even dying patients are not getting an emergency ambulance within eight minutes.”

The trust said that the demand on its services in the December and January period had been ‘amongst the most difficult on record’.

In total, 999 calls have increased seven per cent on the same time the year previously while calls for high risk patients are up more than 10 per cent.

Meanwhile, the average handover time at hospitals has also increased by 10 minutes compared to 2015/16.

An NWAS spokesman added: “Despite this our staff have worked extremely hard to reach patients as quickly as possible and have continued to demonstrate the caring and compassionate qualities recognised by the CQC in their recent report.

“The challenge has been two-fold – first the increase in 999 calls and second the major ambulance delays experienced while handing over patients at the hospitals across the region.

“Operational performance has fallen below the required standard across the region with ambulance trusts around the country struggling to meet standards.

“The trust strives to reach all patients as quickly as possible but is aware of a number of delays to patients in the community and we absolutely agree that long waits for urgent cases are unacceptable and are extremely frustrating for our staff.

“We would like to assure the public that we are doing all we can with our NHS colleagues to overcome these challenges.”