E-cigarette companies fined over false claims about toxic chemicals

Australia’s competition regulator has become the first in the world to successfully take legal action against e-cigarette companies for making false and misleading claims about the carcinogens in their products.

Federal court Justice John Gilmour ordered three online e-cigarette retailers – The Joystick Company Pty Ltd, Social-Lites Pty Ltd and Elusion Australia Ltd – and their individual CEOs and directors to pay penalties for breaching consumer law.

In separate proceedings the court found each of the companies had claimed their products did not contain harmful carcinogens and toxins, when this was not the case. It also found that the directors of Joystick and Elusion, and the CEO of Social-Lites, were knowingly involved in this deception.

Joystick and Social-Lites have been ordered to pay a penalty of $ 50,000, while the company heads have been ordered to pay $ 10,000. Elusion has been ordered to pay $ 40,000 and its director $ 15,000.

All three retailers admitted the conduct alleged by the ACCC and consented to the amounts of the penalties.

According to the case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), statements on the company websites led consumers to believe they would not be exposed to the harmful chemicals found in ordinary cigarettes.

However independent testing commissioned by the ACCC identified the presence of carcinogens and toxic chemicals, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein in the products of Joystick, Social-Lites and Elusion, as well as acetone in Social-Lites’ products.

Formaldehyde is classified by the World Health Organisation International Agency for Research on Cancer as a Group 1A carcinogen, meaning it causes cancer, while acetaldehyde is classified as possibly carcinogenic. Acrolein is classified as a toxic chemical.

Dr Becky Freeman, a tobacco control researcher with the University of Sydney’s school of public health, said some consumers thought e-cigarette companies were “small artisan companies interested in improving health” when in fact most were owned by big tobacco.

Many advertisements for e-cigarettes and related products claimed they were less toxic and therefore less harmful than tobacco, she said. “But I’d challenge you to find something that isn’t less toxic than tobacco,” Freeman said. “We have no long-term data on e-cigarettes to show that they’ve help people quit for good or that they’re safe.”

The federal court ruling was “enormously significant”, said Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor of public health. He was aware that other complaints about e-cigarette advertising have been made to the ACCC. “These are by no means isolated examples,” Chapman said.

“Tobacco companies want to walk on both sides of the street. They try to argue that e-cigarettes are simply an ordinary consumer product and not a therapeutic device and therefore shouldn’t be subject to the same regulations, yet they often make statements that these things are excellent ways of quitting.”

He said it was “insulting to science” to claim the products were harmless or safe given the lack of evidence about long-term effects.

“Of course they don’t have all the products of combustion that tobacco products have, as they are vaporised and not burned. So while they’re likely to be less harmful, we do not yet know the magnitude of their harm, we just have no accurate way of estimating that yet,” said Chapman.

The ACCC’s acting chair, Delia Rickard, said businesses, including those online, must ensure they provide accurate information to customers and have a reasonable basis for making any claims. “This is particularly important for products that may cause harm to the health of consumers,” she said.

E-cigarette companies fined over false claims about toxic chemicals

Belle Gibson hit with $30,000 in court costs over false cancer claims

Disgraced health blogger Belle Gibson has to pay $ 30,000 towards the legal costs of Consumer Affairs Victoria and has been banned from making deceptive claims about her health in connection with wellbeing advice.

Federal court justice Debra Mortimer made the orders on Friday against Annabelle Natalie Gibson, who claimed she had brain cancer and healed herself with natural remedies.

The judge said Gibson was prohibited from claiming, in connection with the development and promotion and sale of her wellness advice:

• that she had been diagnosed with brain cancer at any time before 24 May 2016
  


• that she was given four months to live
  


• that she had taken and then rejected conventional cancer treatments in favour of embarking on a quest to heal herself naturally

Consumer Affairs Victoria took Gibson to court last year alleging she had lied about a 2009 brain cancer diagnosis and subsequent recovery.

It was also alleged that she had lied to consumers about donating to charities from the sales of her Whole Pantry app.

Last month Mortimer found the allegations against Gibson to be mostly true, saying she had “played on the genuine desire of members of the Australian community to help those less fortunate”.

An excerpt from Gibson’s Whole Pantry Book describes her journey from being told she had four months to live, to finding out she was pregnant, to rejecting medical intervention and travelling the country in search of non-medical advice.

If Gibson refused to obey Friday’s court order, she would be liable for imprisonment, sequestration of property or other punishment, the court documents said.

She has been absent from court since the case began and has not defended herself through lawyers.

Belle Gibson hit with $30,000 in court costs over false cancer claims

MPs say cuts are "false economy" in drive to improve poor people"s health

MPs are calling on the prime minister to fulfil her pledge to end the “burning injustice” of shorter lifespans for the poor by boosting public health, after the missed opportunity of the childhood obesity strategy.

But the health select committee is saying in a hard-hitting report that cuts to public health funding since responsibility was handed to local authorities in 2013 will make this more difficult. Cuts are “a false economy”, because keeping people healthy in their communities protects the NHS from the expensive consequences of treating diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses in times to come.

Dr Sarah Wollaston, Tory chair of the committee, said people were rightly scathing about the government’s recent watered-down childhood obesity strategy, which “demonstrates the gap in joined-up evidence-based policy to improve health and wellbeing”.

“Government must match the rhetoric on reducing health inequality with a resolve to take on big industry interests and will need to be prepared to go further if it is serious about achieving its stated aims.”

Speaking to the Guardian, she said people were “hugely disappointed because it was the opportunity to signal intent that this wasn’t going to be business as usual”.

Wollaston added: “People were hugely encouraged by Theresa May’s words and determination. I don’t doubt her intent. What I feel is now at risk is that the people who are going to be tasked with making a difference won’t have the tools to do the job, and at a time of shrinking health budgets it’s even more difficult for them to narrow health inequality.”

Although the childhood obesity figures appear to be levelling off – with about a third of kids overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school – the truth is that the change is in the children of affluent families. The gap between rich and poor children is widening.

“Childhood obesity is this huge future growing disaster not only for these individual children but for the NHS in terms of costs from managing type 2 diabetes,” Wollaston said.

She urged the government to listen to the criticism and act. Linking public health to planning and licensing applications, thereby allowing local authorities to say no to more fast food outlets and off-licences, “would send a very strong signal”, Wollaston said.

She believes the government should also rethink the absence of restrictions on advertising and marketing junk food to children. “There’s nothing there about advergames – the deliberate targeting of children where they think they are playing a game when they are actually having stuff flogged to them. And [it’s] particularly disappointing that there was nothing about the saturation advertising to children and the use of cartoon characters,” she said.

“There was very clear evidence that Public Health England presented about impulse purchases and pester power and end of aisle displays and checkout displays. Everyone recognised that it wasn’t just a single hit here. You had to look at it across the board, yet whole tranches of public health messaging are going to be undermined by the fact that advertising hasn’t been touched at all.”

Funds to local authorities for public health were slashed by £200m last year and more cuts are to come. The report says this is short-sighted and talks of “a growing mismatch” between spending on public health and the significance attached to prevention in NHS chief executive Simon Stevens’s plan. Keeping people well and out of hospital is fundamental to the sustainability of the NHS in his plan.

The report calls for a Cabinet Office minister to be given responsibility for embedding the interests of health in every government department, a proposal welcomed by the Royal Society for Public Health. “A ‘health in all policies’ approach is key to addressing wider determinants of health and health inequalities, such as housing, education and employment, and enhanced cross-departmental working at a national level will help enable this,” said Shirley Cramer, its chief executive.

The Kings Fund agreed. “The government’s weak plan on childhood obesity underlines the need for a minister at the centre of government to coordinate public health policy across departments but, more importantly, to hold departments strongly to account for their actions. Funding reductions are already resulting in significant cuts to key services such as sexual health services and support for people who want to stop smoking,” said David Buck, senior fellow, public health and health inequalities.

Prof John Middleton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said the report “demonstrates the false economy of cutting local authority public health budgets because of the added pressures this puts on NHS resources. Councils in England have worked extremely hard for many years to maintain the services they offer their communities with reduced funding. Nevertheless, sexual health services, drug treatment clinics and other health services funded by councils have been hit hard by these cuts.”

MPs say cuts are "false economy" in drive to improve poor people"s health

Sex choice is a false selection our destiny is not defined by our genitalia | Ally Fogg

In the very good outdated days, it was simple for a girl to decide on the sex of her child. If she wished a woman, she would place a pink ribbon beneath her pillow and a wooden spoon under the bed. If she wished a boy, she would eat plenty of uncommon meat and make adore with the man on leading. These approaches had been safe, cheap and, ideal of all, would function properly on about 50% of occasions.

Engineering has given that progressed and many newspapers are nowadays reporting claims that hundreds of would-be parents are travelling from the United kingdom to the US every year to acquire IVF remedies, with the sole aim of picking the intercourse of their child. According to embryologist Daniel Potter, 80% of individuals undertaking so are demanding to have girls.

Explanations for this trend are coming in thick and quick. Ellie Lee of the University of Kent is quoted in the Instances (paywalled hyperlink) as saying: “It could be a wider pattern of girls currently being on the up and boys going the other way … There is a lot of negativity close to boys – a fear that they get into difficulties, that childhood circumstances are a lot more likely to impact them, that they have a lot more problems than women.”

Potter claims that the women he sees are desperate for a lady, obtaining grown up playing with dolls and constantly imagining themselves with a daughter. He advised the Telegraph: “Some have only 1 youngster but most have two or 3 of the exact same gender. The procedure is driven by the mom who has identified with minor ladies because her personal childhood and has usually had a location for a daughter. When they do not have 1, it is like a death and they grieve for their tiny lady.”

Maybe some insight into the mindset concerned can be gleaned from a specified flavour of newspaper columnist. You might recall a couple of many years ago the Every day Mail ran one of its pages of button-jabbing provocation, in which Esther Walker described her fears that the embryo in her womb may possibly be male. “Boys are gross,” she wrote. “They attack their siblings with sticks, are obsessed with toilets, casually murder regional wildlife and flip into disgusting teenage boys and then boring, selfish men.”

In the Telegraph right now, Beverley Turner is slightly far more subtle but conveys the identical considerations: “Most mothers who have experimented with to get their 4-12 months-previous son to sit even now lengthy adequate to watch you peel a pile of carrots will know what I’m talking about. These females go for coffee with other new mums and watch enviously as the little girls crowd about a colouring guide for a quiet half-an-hour, even though their son climbs up the back of the sofa, knocks more than their latte and up-ends a shelf of neatly stacked bottled water.”

It is at exactly this level that I want to assemble all these doctors, mothers and fathers and newspaper columnists in one area and, in a strictly metaphorical, non-violent way, bang their bloody heads collectively.

Youngsters are not defined by their biological sex or even their socially constructed gender overall performance. You may have a kid who loves to run, leap, climb, kick footballs and come residence caked in mud, and that youngster may develop to be the subsequent David Beckham or Jessica Ennis. You may possibly raise a youngster who loves to sit and draw or create stories, who might turn into the up coming Alison Bechdel or Alan Moore. If you want your youngster to understand to sit politely when you’re having coffee, educate your kid some manners. If you fantasise about raising a best princess who can be dressed specifically as you like, with her hair and make-up carried out to perfection then buy a Barbie doll simply because you’re obviously not prepared to manage a real human getting with a mind of her very own.

There is overwhelming proof that a really large proportion of the variations in gender performance amongst youthful boys and youthful ladies can be accounted for by children’s astonishing ability to grow to match our expectations of them. Folks who believe that boys are uncontrollable monsters will also usually uncover themselves parenting uncontrollable monsters. Meanwhile any mother or father who is welded to a stringent image of how their youngster will develop and behave is asking for trouble and disappointment. Most children have their personal quirks. Some are gender non-conforming. All are a complex combine of realized behaviours, feelings, habits and genes.

Rumbling beneath the unsubtle PR campaign which has driven this week’s information is I suspect, a covert agenda. The personal IVF sector would like nothing at all much more than to overturn the law that bans sex choice practices for non-clinical causes. Such a liberalisation would open up a possibly massive and rewarding industry.

It is strain which need to be, I think, resisted. This is not so significantly because it could lead to calamitous sex-ratio difficulties – I firmly think the overwhelming vast majority of mothers and fathers would continue to feel “so prolonged as she or he is healthful I do not care”. However making intercourse selection mainstream would validate the false and damaging belief that our social, psychological and emotional destiny is determined by our genitalia. We have invested the previous 50 many years taking important actions away from individuals assumptions, to everyone’s benefit.

This is 1 of those cases in which technological progress can be socially regressive. If you genuinely want a lady, stick to the wooden spoon below the mattress strategy.

Sex choice is a false selection our destiny is not defined by our genitalia | Ally Fogg

Cutting hospital beds is a false economic climate | Zara Aziz

‘It is accurate that our elderly population is living longer, but with a better burden of illness.’ Photograph: Alamy

A latest examine by the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Development found the United kingdom had the 2nd lowest variety of hospital beds per capita in Europe. There are two.95 beds in the United kingdom per one,000 men and women, and we are seeing more and much more beds currently being lower as smaller sized hospitals amalgamate into larger trusts. The only country that has fewer beds is Sweden, but it has different patient demographics and invests more in community overall health providers, this kind of as for ailment prevention and management of prolonged-phrase problems.

It is symptomatic of the challenge facing the NHS. Commissioning groups and hospital trusts are asked to supply ever much more: reduce A&ampE attendance, unplanned admissions and outpatient waiting occasions, whilst concurrently coping with a workforce crisis and catastrophic budget cuts.

My patient Arthur is a sprightly 81-12 months-outdated retired lecturer, who lives in warden-controlled accommodation. He nursed his wife by means of breast cancer until she died two years ago. He typically manages well: he has meals on wheels and one carer check out a day, to aid with any home tasks or buying. If he needs to see a medical professional, he typically walks the 50 yards it will take to get to our surgery.

He has never ever requested a property pay a visit to right up until the Tuesday that he requests a home call. When I see him, he is quite brief of breath and agitated. I suspect that he has pneumonia. His oxygen ranges are slipping, so I arrange an emergency ambulance to take him to the local hospital. I ring the single level of referral telephone line (this accepts all acute GP health care and surgical admissions). It generally faces higher demand on most days, but that day the hospital is on “red alert”: ambulances are backing up in A&ampE, unable to transfer their individuals. There are no empty healthcare beds to talk of, and hospital doctors are urgently making an attempt to discharge inpatients.

Soon after eight hrs of waiting in A&ampE, Arthur is transferred to an outlying orthopaedic ward. His chest x-ray showed pneumonia. He is handled on intravenous antibiotics for 24 hours and discharged with oral antibiotics on Thursday. When I see him the subsequent day, he admits that he feels tiny better, but is adamant he needs no even more intervention in hospital, come what could. He is philosophical about the care he has acquired. “Absolutely everyone functions really challenging and with resigned excellent humour, but the method is bursting at the seams,” he says.

It is true that our elderly population is living longer, but with a greater burden of illness. The standard position of a generalist GP is altering, as we see far more expert work spilling out of secondary care. GPs are expected to absorb this operate, but with no further sources. When I 1st joined my practice in 2010, we utilised to have an in-residence local community matron (to support assistance our sufferers with prolonged-phrase conditions). The funding for this was cut, and we now share a matron with three other practices (covering a total baseline population of all around forty,000 patients).

Our neighborhood trust has undergone major reconfiguration, with the imminent closure of one massive hospital and the transfer of all companies to the other web site. This will consequence in a net loss of 200 acute beds, which is probably to impact sufferers like Arthur, and stretch primary care in Bristol in an unprecedented way.

Several NHS trusts in England face comparable reconfigurations, and the government would do nicely to emphasis on what this means at patient degree, as there are no “quick fixes” when planning healthcare demands for sick individuals. Cuts in numbers of hospital beds can only work if these are replaced with equivalent community-based solutions, this kind of as more stage-down intermediate beds. Otherwise we will carry on to see an escalation of failed hospital discharges and “revolving-door” admissions.

Cutting hospital beds is a false economic climate | Zara Aziz

False economies are leaving the mentally sick vulnerable

Young individuals are not receiving the support companies they want. Photograph: Alamy

Mental overall health solutions are dealing with critical monetary pressures. From hospitals to local community care, from children’s solutions to people for adults, budgets for mental health help are getting reduce across the nation. And this is getting an impact on a range of solutions, particularly these that support folks to stay nicely and to recover their lives.

In 2010-eleven, the final yr for which we have dependable investing data, funding for grownup mental wellness services fell in true terms for the initial time in a decade. Freedom of info requests given that then have unearthed proof of additional cuts in a lot of areas the two for adults’ and children’s mental wellness solutions. In some regions, this signifies specialist community teams are being “merged” into generic providers. In other people, help is restricted to people with the most urgent needs although value-efficient early interventions like college and parenting programmes are scaled back. In such circumstances, quick-term savings to stability the books could end up costing the public purse significantly a lot more as people’s demands escalate and become a lot more complicated.

The NHS is now committed via its mandate from the government to perform in the direction of putting mental well being on a par with physical overall health. At existing we are a long way from achieving this. Mental unwell well being accounts for a quarter of all sickness in the Uk however it will get just 13% of NHS funding. And expert children’s psychological well being solutions get less than one%.

Long-term under-investment and quick-phrase cuts combine to place providers beneath critical strain. From the continued use of police stations as “locations of security” for folks in a mental wellness emergency to inappropriate admission of young children to adult psychiatric wards, these pressures influence some of the most vulnerable folks at the most difficult times in their lives.

It is vital that all mental well being providers, be they publicly or privately presented, are needed to meet the exact same large requirements we have of other NHS-funded hospitals and clinics. Neighborhood health and care commissioners want to assure themselves they know the demands of their local populations and that they are capable to meet them making use of providers that meet the standards of the quality regulator, the Care Good quality Commission. This is particularly the situation for the steadily increasing amount of individuals who are detained in hospital under the Psychological Well being Act, whose rights and dignity need to never be compromised.

Our children’s psychological wellness can’t be left to opportunity. One particular little one in 10 has a psychological well being difficulty. 3 quarters never receive any therapy or support. Nevertheless youngsters with poor mental health go on to become grownups with bad mental well being. And these with the most typical childhood mental health dilemma, carry out disorder, can search forward to substantially harder, poorer and shorter lives than their classmates. We want to take action now to produce a entire system of mental wellness assistance for children that boosts resilience and protects people who turn into unwell.

We want colleges to turn out to be vigilant for the indications of psychological ill overall health, supporting healthy little one growth, tackling bullying and teaching emotional wellbeing. We need to have to invest, as well, in the psychological health of mothers and fathers, supporting these whose children are most at risk to produce constructive parenting strategies.

We need to have to hold building on the government’s initiative to boost accessibility to psychological therapies for kids and younger people (and their dad and mom) to ensure that all who could advantage from verified expense-successful treatments are presented timely assistance from engaging and highly experienced staff.

And we need to have to make sure that care is there in a crisis for kids who are at their most vulnerable. All providers that operate with young children and families must be vigilant for the indications of tension that lead to a crisis. And in each spot of the nation the NHS need to have to supply appropriate beds for younger men and women who require emergency psychological health care, diversion companies at the point of arrest for youthful men and women who get into difficulty with the police, and on-get in touch with help and tips in A&ampE units from liaison psychiatry teams.

False economies are leaving the mentally sick vulnerable

False Label Class Action Law Suit Towards Trader Joe’s To Settle For three.4 Million

by Prolonged Island Attorney Paul A. Lauto, Esq./www.liattorney.com

“Say it ain’t so Joe,” but alas even Trader Joe’s was faced with a class action law suit claiming false and misleading use of “All Natural” and “100% Natural” labels on foods merchandise.  The suit claimed that Trader Joe’s charged a premium on meals products falsely labeled “All Natural” and “100% Organic,” as they contained synthetic and artificial elements such as xanthan gum.

A Federal Court Judge has preliminarily accepted a settlement for approximately $ 3.four million bucks, with last approval scheduled for a July hearing.  The income set aside is in element to be utilized to reimburse customers with and without receipts for the offending foods items, including a range of cookies, juice, rolls, cheese and far more.

This situation represents the mere tip of the “All Natural” litigation ice berg, which has been allowed to form courtesy of the FDA and their refusal to define the word “Natural.”  The bottom line is that the food sector is big company and meals shops are in that business to make income.  The FDA is suppose to safeguard buyers towards the malevolence of large business, but as several think, that is like asking the fox to watch the hen property.

We need to have a governmental meals company that in fact does their purported occupation of guarding American buyers.  The ideal way to effectuate alter is by way of a enormous grass roots movement by the people.  If people in every single state complain to their Senators, Congressmen and Governors about the true need to have to remove the FDA and create a new governmental food agency totally free of outdoors influence, all issues are possible.  When politicians are convinced that the men and women demand a change and that their political careers depend on it, we will do well in acquiring the wolves to flip on themselves.

If you think it is time to do away with the FDA and replace it with a meals only governmental agency that genuinely protects the American consumer, then get a first proactive phase by signing a petition to do so at www.alter.org/petitions/kathleen-sebelius-u-s-secretary-of-health-and-human-services-do-away-with-the-fda-and-replace-it-with-a-new-foods-only-governmental-agency-that-actually-protects-buyers?recruiter=82663938&amputm_source=share_petition&amputm_medium=email&amputm
_campaigh=petition_invitation.  With each other we can make a much better tomorrow.

Long Island Attorney
Paul A. Lauto, Esq.
www.liattorney.com

False Label Class Action Law Suit Towards Trader Joe’s To Settle For three.4 Million

A single in four hospitals records false waiting times

The report highlights a series of recent cases in which hundreds of sufferers have been forced to wait months for therapy, following information was allegedly fiddled in buy to disguise long waits, or since of blunders which meant situations have been wrongly recorded or even forgotten about.

It suggests this kind of practices might be widespread across the health support – which means that figures which are regularly published on hospital overall performance may bear no relation to the actuality for thousands of patients.

Auditors examined waiting instances for 650 orthopaedic patients treated at seven hospitals in England.

They found that in just 43 per cent of situations, data was correctly recorded. Mistakes have been located in 26 per cent of instances and on regular, individuals waited a total 3 weeks longer than information identified. In a more 31 per cent of situations, records were incomplete, producing it extremely hard for auditors to judge whether or not information had been manipulated or entered in error.

At Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS believe in, 55 per cent of situations critiques contained errors – that means the clock had been started out at the wrong time, or “paused” when it must not have been.

Nearly 40 per cent of the situations examined at Oxford University Hospitals trust and 29 per cent of cases at Bolton NHS Basis trust involved similarly incorrect data.

Even at the ideal of the 7 hospitals examined in the spotchecks a single in twelve information did not reflect the correct waiting time of the patient, the audit identified.

Last evening, Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Sufferers Association said: “It’s scandalous that hospitals have been in a position to get away with this.

“NHS trusts have been ready to manipulate the figures to present a picture which not only misleads the public, but signifies that we have no idea how numerous patients have been forced to wait far too prolonged, growing the dangers to their overall health.”

Charlotte Leslie, a Conservative member of the Commons wellness pick committee, mentioned: “This reflects appalling behaviour by NHS managers and it actually matches the perception that the public previously have that as well many managers care far more about hitting targets than they do about patient safety.”

She explained that cases in which information was manipulated were “absolutely unforgiveable” but that the NHS culture needed to shift away from targets, to put quality of care over almost everything else.

The NAO report highlights a series of latest situations in which thousands of individuals have been forced to endure prolonged waits because of mistakes and manipulation of information.

Police are currently investigating allegations that cancer waiting instances have been deliberately falsified at Colchester Hospital University NHS Basis Trust, where workers said they were “bullied or pressured” into altering the data.

A Care Top quality Commission (CQC) report into Colchester found that, in 22 circumstances, the therapy dates recorded on the technique had been altered and an investigation is examining thousands far more circumstances.

North West London Hospitals NHS Believe in failed to record properly the waiting times of two,700 individuals booked for inpatient treatment, such as 12 who ended up waiting much more than a year for remedy, the NAO report stated. The trust said its workers had not deliberately misrecorded data, but an internal report by the believe in found “a culture in which some workers felt under stress to stop patients’ clocks prematurely”.

More than half of its waiting lists for planned inpatient remedy were misrecorded.

Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Believe in failed to monitor far more than 2,000 sufferers on the waiting record, leaving more than 600 individuals to wait between 18 weeks and a year for remedy, ahead of the delays have been uncovered in November.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, mentioned: “We have identified substantial errors and inconsistencies in how trusts record waiting time, masking a good deal of variation in between trusts in real waiting times.”

He stated trusts’ waiting record figures needed to be independently scrutinised, and warned that the NHS current techniques would “not detect errors or misreporting of the variety identified in this report”.

A spokeswoman for the Well being Secretary said: “Overall waiting times continue to be reduced and stable, with the amount of patients waiting longer than 18, 26 and 52 weeks reduce than at any time underneath the last Government.”

“It’s vital that reporting is usually exact, and we will work with the NHS to make certain hospital employees get the help they require to get this proper.”

A single in four hospitals records false waiting times