AN ALARMING 50% rise in the number of Merseyside patients waiting more than six weeks for vital health tests put the Government in the firing line yesterday.

Labour seized on the sharp increases – particularly at Wirral Hospital Trust and The Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery – as evidence that hidden NHS cuts were beginning to bite.

The number of patients suffering the longer waits leapt to 506, in April, 2011, from just 337 one year earlier, across Merseyside and North Cheshire, the Daily Post can reveal.

But the Department for Health (DoH) insisted the rises reflected growing demand for NHS diagnostic services, adding: "Waiting times go up and they go down, but they remain broadly stable."

Embarrassingly for David Cameron, the figures were released just days after he made a high-profile pledge not to allow NHS waiting times to creep up.

The Prime Minister said: "Waiting times really matter. I refuse to go back to the days when people had to wait for hours on end to be seen in A&E, or months and months to have surgery done. So let me be absolutely clear – we won't."

At Wirral Hospital Trust, the number of patients waiting six weeks or more soared from only 20 to 158 in just 12 months, the DoH figures showed.

The delays were sharpest for audiology assessments (43), ultrasounds (29), CT scans (22), gastroscopy (19) and colonscopy (17).

The trust acknowledged some waiting times had gone up, but insisted it was only for a "small number of the diagnostic investigations it performs".