Gary Doherty, Director of Operations and Strategy, at Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said the figures “must be set against the total number of 36,725 planned admissions which took place at Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge hospitals in that period”.

He said: “This therefore means that more than 99.6% of operations occurred as planned.”

Mr Doherty added: “In addition, any operation cancelled for non-medical reasons is rescheduled within 28 days.”

Across the UK Great Ormond Street Hospital For Children NHS Trust said it had recorded 3,590 cancelled operations, while Kingston Hospital NHS Trust said there had been 10,351.

However, last night the figures were being disputed after a number of Trusts across the country

The statistics from the Tories obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from 124 Trusts suggested that more than 7,000 patients had their NHS operation cancelled more than once in the last year in England.

Overall statistics showed that 77,302 operations in total were cancelled for non-clinical reasons.

Several NHS Trusts said they had supplied the wrong data to the Tories or accused the Conservatives of manipulating the figures.

The Department of Health also said thousands of cancellations were due to patients changing the date of the operation themselves – something that was not the fault of the NHS.