Winters

His colleague Kevin Winters said his clients would now "refocus" on the stalled High Court civil action and "today's findings will really help recalibrate that case".

This, it says, made bottlenecks worse in A&E and for ambulances trying to hand over patients and that delays for those handovers were worse than in previous winters.

Hospital patients with the winter vomiting bug norovirus were also more numerous than in many winters.

But hospital admissions for the respiratory virus RSV were similar to previous winters, and Covid admissions remained relatively low.

The authors argue that the NHS should be prepared for winters like this one and that blaming external factors such as winter bugs risked offering "false comfort" about the state of the health service.