The NHS mandate pledges to cut waiting times, improve access to primary care and improve urgent and emergency care.

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘I am re-focusing the NHS on making progress towards the 18-week standard, and the steps to achieve this were set out in our Elective Reform Plan.

‘I am instructing the NHS to focus on the fundamentals and get back to basics. We are giving local leaders clear directions to prioritise cutting elective care waiting lists, improve A&E and ambulance wait times, improve access to GPs and urgent dental care, and solve the mental health crisis.'

The policy paper also pledges to reduce the proportion of people waiting over 65 weeks in 2024-25 and 2025-26.

The Liberal Democrats said the announcement fell ‘short of the mark' and revealed a ‘lack of ambition'.

Liberal Democrat health and social care spokesperson Helen Morgan, said: ‘This should have been a line in the sand for our NHS. The normalisation of patients dying in corridors and people waiting endlessly for desperately needed care must end.

‘There is no mention of the crisis in maternity or giving patients a legal right to see their GP within a week, as the Liberal Democrats have been calling for for years now.

‘It appears the Government has accepted a managed decline of our NHS, not rebuilding it to be the envy of the world as it once was. It is only patients who will bear the brunt of the Government's refusal to step up properly.'