NORTH West health chiefs have come under fire from the government for the highest hospital waiting lists outside London.

And the region has been given a year to cut 20,000 patients from the list or see their jobs taken over by hit squads.

Health secretary Frank Dobson announced the ultimatum as new figures showed that overall hospital waiting lists in England rose by 35,700 to a record 1,297,700 at the end of March.

An embarrassed Mr Dobson has now set tough targets for every region in Britain to reduce their lists.

Mr Dobson warned: "There will be rewards for those who hit their target and sanctions for those who do not. Performance will be closely monitored."

In the north west he has said that the total of 191,989 patients waiting for treatment at the end of March must be reduced by almost 20,000 to 172,137 by the beginning of April next year.

That would be a cut of 10.3 per cent on the current total and the reduction of 4.3 per cent on the 179,884 figure the government inherited from March 1997. Nationally the total must come down by 13.1 per cent to just 1.1 million - which would be 2.1 per cent less than the March 97 figure of 1.13 million.

Health authorities that meet target could get an extra 10 per cent of their cash allocation to do even more operations over the autumn and winter.

But those who fail would find the 10 per cent used to send hit squads of managers and clinicians with a proven track record of cutting waiting lists into health authorities and NHS Trusts.

Mr Dobson said: "The NHS has proved it can deliver the goods, given clear goals and targeted attention and money. These targets spell out what part we expect them to play in delivering the national target we have set."

For the first time in the history of the NHS no one in England had been waiting more than 18 months for treatment. To achieve this 18,000 extra patients had been treated.

And for the first time in two years there was a slight drop - 300 - in the number of people waiting for a year.

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