The Government must invest in public health to ease pressure on a health service ‘in critical condition’, according to a damning new review of the NHS.

The Independent Investigation of the NHS in England found the nation’s health has deteriorated, waiting times have surged, and ‘no progress whatsoever’ has been made diagnosing stage one and two cancers between 2013 and 2021.

The report by Lord Darzi, a surgeon with 30 years’ experience in the NHS, found the waiting lists for community and mental health services each had a million people on, and concluded that too little of the NHS budget was spent in communities as funding was poured into hospitals.

The report said it was ‘perverse’ that the public health grant to local authorities had been cut by more than a quarter since 2015.

Lord Darzi said there was ‘extraordinary power in getting public health right’ to reduce the burden on the NHS and social care and boost economic productivity.

‘But it takes the political will and willingness to invest to achieve it, with the skills to successfully engage the public’, he said.

The president of the Association of Directors of Public Health, Greg Fell, said: ‘More should be done to adequately resource existing public health networks so that our communities are more able to support people and prevent such high levels of demand for NHS treatment.’

Lord Darzi’s report also called for the creation of a ‘neighbourhood NHS’, with primary, community and mental health services brought together in ‘new multidisciplinary models of care’.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said social care must be at the heart of these plans, and the Carer’s Trust criticised the new Government for its ‘silence’ on social care.

Carers Trust's policy and public affairs manager, Ramzi Suleiman, said: ‘The crisis in the NHS has no chance of being fixed until the Government breaks its silence on social care.’