“SHAMEFUL” TORY cutbacks have resulted in thousands of NHS operations being cancelled due to staff shortages and equipment failures, Labour has warned.

New data gathered via a Freedom of Information request reveals a steady rise in non-clinical cancellations, with 78,981 patients turned away last year. The figure in 2016/17 was 74,170. Examples of non-clinical reasons can be lack of beds, staffing shortages, adverse weather, equipment problems, booking/admin errors.

Of these, the number of ops cancelled as a result of staffing issues jumped from 8,231 to 10,909 and those cancelled as a result of equipment failures went up from 3,739 to 4,858 over the same period.

The operations were either classed as urgent or were elective ops cancelled at the last minute, either on the day of surgery or after the patients had already arrived at the hospital.

There are now more than 100,000 staffing vacancies in the health service, with shortages of 10,000 doctors and 43,000 nurses.

Cuts to NHS capital budgets have also left the health service with a £6.5 billion repair bill.

Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “That so many more people in pain and distress are forced to endure cancelled operations is a shameful indictment of a decade of Tory cutbacks running our NHS into the ground.

“The simple truth is: under the Tories, patients wait longer and longer for vital care. This general election is about the future of the NHS and ensuring quality care for all.

“Labour will fully fund our NHS, recruit the doctors and nurses we need and safeguard our NHS from a Trump deal sell-off that could cost the NHS £500 million a week.”

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard will meet health campaigners outside Monklands Hospital in North Lanarkshire today to highlight “a catalogue of missed targets” that ministers have set for themselves.

Capital funding for health services in Scotland have suffered a 63 per cent drop in the past decade, resulting in a £914 million backlog of maintenance issues across the NHS.

Mr Leonard will say: “You can only trust Labour with the NHS. The Tories would sell it off to [US President Donald Trump] and [First Minister] Nicola Sturgeon has fallen asleep at the wheel.

“Be in no doubt: you cannot trust the Tories with our NHS — they opposed its creation, and they are intent on destroying it once and for all if we leave the EU.

“Be in no doubt: you cannot trust the SNP with our NHS — they have mismanaged it for over a decade. The SNP is asleep at the wheel as our health service faces its biggest danger since it was created.”

Scottish Labour warn that with a £1.8bn shortage in the Scottish health-services budget for the next four years, the government has “failed to plan for the future” of the NHS.

Doctors’ union the British Medical Association (BMA) accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday of only recognising an “unprecedented” NHS crisis for the coming winter because of fears it will hamper the Tories’ chances in the general election.

BMA council chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: “Under this government’s watch, patients and staff working in the NHS have endured winter after winter of overcrowded emergency departments, long delays and pitifully low staffing levels.

“It should not take an election to take stock of just how bad the situation has become.”