Watch: Rishi Sunak is grilled by ex-health worker on the state of the NHS and her daughter's seven-hour wait

Rishi Sunak was grilled by a woman over the state of the NHS, as she told him about a seven-hour wait her daughter had to endure.

Sky News footage shows the Prime Minister being quizzed by the ex-health worker on a walkabout in Winchester Hampshire. The clip starts with Sunak blaming the recent record waiting lists for NHS treatment in England on striking doctors.

He says: "Last year, towards the end of the year, we had two months with virtually no strikes in October and November." The woman responds: "Well that was a fortunate thing."

The PM continues: "Do you know what happened? The waiting list fell by 150,000 over those two months, and it just shows that when there aren't strikes we really can make progress. We didn't last year because of all the strikes."

The woman then interrupts as says: "But you could stop it all, you could make it all go back to how it used to be… where, if you had a problem, you could go to the hospital." In the middle of her sentence Sunak laughs at a joke a person in the crowd makes.

She then starts to tell the PM "my daughter spent seven hours waiting" and Sunak walks away before continuing the conversation. He says: "I'm sorry to hear that - the key thing is we've resolved all the industrial action in the NHS apart from the junior doctors." They then shake hands.

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats hit out at the Prime Minister over the clip. Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Rishi Sunak has no idea of the misery NHS patients are going through. When Sunak asks for their vote later this year, he will get a taste of his own medicine.”

Lib Dem Christine Jardine accused the PM of “laughing in the face of a former health worker whilst they are trying to explain to him the dire straits the NHS” is in, calling it “frankly shocking”.

Sunak made cutting waiting lists one of the five key priorities of his leadership. In December 2022, the overall NHS waiting list in England was 7.2million - the latest figures when the Prime Minister made his pledge. Since then, it's consistently hit record highs, with the latest figures showing more than 7.6million people are waiting for care. The Department for Health is still grappling with strikes, with a record junior doctors walk out earlier this month.

Dr Sarah Scobie, the Nuffield Trust's acting director of research, told NationalWorld: "In order to get the waiting list down, we don't just need to increase activity to meet the demand which would have been there anyway, we also need to meet the demand that has built up since the pandemic and because of the pressure on the NHS. We need to do even more than that to ensure it will go down."

NationalWorld initially reported that Rishi Sunak had walked away from the woman, based on the first clip Sky News released. The broadcaster then released a longer clip, which we've included above, which shows the woman and Prime Minister continuing their conversation.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.