A patient in the North West waited more than 65 hours for a response to an urgent call for an ambulance last year, figures show.
Data collected by the Labour Party via Freedom of Information requests have highlighted the crisis in emergency care in the NHS, with patients all over the country enduring huge waits for ambulances or being stuck outside hospitals waiting to be taken in.
Labour received responses from half of the country's ambulance trusts. One response showed that a patient in the North West was forced to wait for 65 hours, 38 minutes and 13 seconds for a response to a category 3 call.
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Category 3 means the call is urgent but not immediately life-threatening. These calls should be reached within two hours in 90% of cases. The data also shows that waits after category 2 calls - which can include heart attack and stroke patients - in the West Midlands and Yorkshire saw patients waiting for more than 21 hours. The target for these calls is 18 minutes.
One patient who waited 40 hours in the back of an ambulance outside a hospital in the South West due to staff and bed shortages, while a patient in the East of England with an almost 36-hour wait.
Another West Midlands patient waited for 32 hours in the back of an ambulance.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: "Patients can no longer trust that an ambulance will reach them in an emergency. Stroke and heart attack victims are left waiting for hours, when every second counts."
NHS Providers chief executive Sir Julian Hartley said: “These figures are further evidence, were it needed, that last winter was one of toughest on record for the NHS.
“Trust leaders will be very concerned by these wait times as ensuring timely, high-quality care for patients is their top priority.
“The causes of long ambulance waits are complex. High demand – always at its worst in winter – along with overstretched capacity and vast workforce shortages all contribute.
“Trust leaders are working extremely hard to recover urgent and emergency care services and develop community and mental health support to ensure patients can access the care they need swiftly in the right setting. However, they desperately need action on a national level to help tackle these problems.
“The government’s promised long-term workforce plan, which must be fully funded, should help address these issues. It cannot come a minute too soon.”
The NHS data shows that on average, people waiting for a category 2 response in December waited one hour, 32 minutes and 54 seconds, the NHS England data showed. Meanwhile, 36,000 category 2 patients waited for ambulances for more than three and a half hours in December.
Mr Streeting added: "This is the terrifying reality after 13 years of Conservative understaffing of our NHS.
"Patients should be able to phone 999, safe in the knowledge that they will get an answer and an ambulance when they need it. The longer we keep the Conservatives in office, the longer patients will wait.
"Labour will launch the biggest expansion of the NHS workforce in history, training the staff needed to reach patients on time, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. We will ensure the NHS is there for us when we need it once again."
A Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman said: “No one should have to wait longer than necessary to access urgent and emergency care and we are working hard to improve ambulance waiting times, which have substantially reduced from the peak of winter pressures in December 2022.
“Our Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan will allow people to be seen quicker by scaling up community teams, expanding virtual wards, and getting 800 new ambulances on the road."
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