and tributes for the legendary rock guitaristjeff beck who s died at the age of 78. there s more evidence today of the crisis in the nhs in england. ambulance response times in december were the worst on record. for category two emergency calls, including strokes, they were more than an hour and a half on average. the target is 18 minutes. the highest priority calls, with an immediate threat to life, took almost 11 minutes on average. the target is seven. and patients are waiting even longer in accident and emergency, 35% waited more than four hours that s another record. our health correspondent jim reed reports.
we have a full resus, a full majors, a full waiting room and a full paediatric department and we have three priority calls, within the space of five minutes. there s a rush of patients, all needing immediate care. a&e is close to being full. it s relentless. so, it looks like the current wait time in paediatrics is about three hours. tarj is a receptionist in the emergency department. upbeat, despite the pressure. perfect, we ll see you then, 0k? bye. sorry about that. does it get very crowded when they get frustrated? oh, yes, very much so. yesterday i believe we had 120 people in the waiting rooms. the patients in there were crammed in like sardines. you know, when you see the london underground during rush hour, very similar to that. and difficult patients sometimes? funnily enough we had a screen broken yesterday from a quite difficult patient, so it is one of those things where this here is quite for our own protection as well
accident and emergency departments, which had their busiest ever month in november, are the worst affected. but waiting lists for treatment have also reached a record high. in october, 7.2 million people were waiting to start routine treatment in england. and the performance figures for waiting times in a&e speak for themselves. not one part of the uk comes close to the 95% target for people to be dealt with within four hours. northern ireland is doing especially badly in this context. our health editor hugh pym spent the day with a&e staff at the royal berkshire hospital in reading, to see the reality first hand and the pressures they are under. we have a full resus, a full majors, a full waiting room and a full paediatric department and we have three priority calls, within the space of five minutes. there s a rush of patients, all needing immediate care. a&e is close to being full.
the ambulance service. they will be thinking about how they bring in staff who are essential to drive ambulances, perhaps nonunion staff, but also looking at things like the military, seeing how they can use them to assist them to continue to deliver their service. they will also be looking at what they can offer, so some of the less important activities that these organisations do will have to stop and they will focus on saving lives and the priority calls. those are quite advanced. they have other plans for things like fuel strikes and anything that might disrupt essential services, anything that might disrupt essentialservices, but anything that might disrupt essential services, but as the number of strikes gets more and more, it will become increasingly difficult to cover all of the bases. we have heard reports today, the cabinet office and they have 2,000 people, military personnel, other
very advanced contingency plans, particularly the fire service and the ambulance service. they ll be thinking about how they bring in staff who are essential to drive ambulances, perhaps nonunion staff, but also looking at things like the military, seeing how they could use them to assist them to continue to deliver services. they ll also be looking about what they can offer, so some of the less important activities that these organisations do will have to stop, and they ll focus on saving lives and the priority calls. so those are quite advanced. they have other plans for things like fuel strikes and anything that might disrupt essential services, but as the number of strikes gets more and more, it will become increasingly difficult to cover all the bases. the iranian attorney general has said the authorities are moving to dismantle the country s so called