THOUSANDS of cancer patients are waiting months for treatment despite “urgent” referrals to specialists, NHS England data revealed today.

The NHS has not hit its target that 85 per cent of urgent referrals start treatment within two months since 2015, but numbers waiting have trebled since Covid appeared.

And new figures for October show that more than 4,400 patients had been waiting more than two months.

It means only 67.8 per cent of cancer patients were treated within two months of receiving an urgent referral from their GP, the lowest figure on record.

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “I can have no complaints about my own treatment for kidney cancer this year, I owe the NHS my life. But I could see how overstretched staff are and not every patient is as fortunate as I was.

“Patients have been left waiting too long for cancer treatment for years. The problem began well before the pandemic, thanks to 11 years of Conservative mismanagement of our NHS.

“It’s not just that the Tories didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining, they dismantled the roof and removed the floorboards.”

Labour has promised to provide the NHS with the staff, modern equipment and technology it needs to “deliver better care quicker.”

The latest figures also reveal that a record number of patients waited longer than two weeks to see a consultant after an urgent referral for cancer from their GP.

Over 42,000 people waited beyond the two-week target, with just 81.3 per cent of patients seen with a fortnight.

Between 2010 and 2019, the numbers waiting more than two weeks increased fivefold from 3,500 each month to 18,900.

The Royal College of Nursing warned that pressure on services is increasing through increasing numbers of vacancies and Covid-19 admissions.

General secretary and chief executive Pat Cullen said: “As the pandemic moves into a third calendar year and now we face another Covid wave, our members talk vividly about the toll of the pandemic and years of understaffing.”