Doctors from Derriford and Torbay hospitals are among those who signed a letter to the Prime Minister calling the NHS “severely and chronically underfunded”.

Nick Mathieu from Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust and Ann Hicks from Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust signed a letter from consultants in Emergency Medicine, Fellows of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and Consultants in charge of our Emergency Departments, representing 68 Acute Hospitals across England and Wales.

The letter says that underfunding has led to over “120 patients a day managed in corridors, some dying prematurely”, that the average wait between being admitted to being given a bed was “an average of 10-12 hours”, more than 50 patients at a time were waiting for beds in the Emergency Department and patients “sleeping in clinics as makeshift wards”.

The letter states: “We feel compelled to speak out in support of our hardworking and dedicated nursing, medical and allied health professional colleagues and for the very serious concerns we have for the safety of our patients.

“This current level of safety compromise is at times intolerable, despite the best efforts of staff.

“It has been stated that the NHS was better prepared for this winter than ever before. There is no question that a huge amount of effort and energy has been spent both locally and nationally on drawing up plans for coping with NHS winter pressures.

“Our experience at the front line is that these plans have failed to deliver anywhere near what was needed.”

It goes on to say: “The facts remain however that the NHS is severely and chronically underfunded. We have insufficient hospital and community beds and staff of all disciplines especially at the front door to cope with our ageing population’s health needs.”

The doctors apologised to their patients for “being unable to fulfil our pledge for a safe efficient service” and signed off with a quote from The NHS Constitution, 1948: “The NHS belongs to the people….it touches our lives at times of basic human need when care and compassion are what matter most”.

The doctors signed the letter “on behalf of ourselves and our departments but this does not necessarily represent the views of our individual trusts”.

Dr Sarah Wollaston MP said: “My view is that ministers need to be clearer in discussing the scale of the underlying challenges if we are going to see the government agree to tackle tough discussions about funding.

“I believe we need to see a funding review that takes a whole system approach covering the NHS, social care and public health. It needs to address both the immediate need for more funding and take a long view in explaining the scale of rising demand, what that will cost.

“I think that the options for funding need to be set out for the public, including the consequences of not doing so, and that this needs to be spread fairly across the generations rather than falling solely on working age employed adults.

“I support the call for National Insurance to be renamed and function as an hypothecated health and care tax. That said, I do not think that it would be fair for those already paying back student loans to have to pay more whilst wealthy older people in retirement were exempt.

“The reality is that any change that sees people paying more tends to get blocked in a hung Parliament and that is why political parties need to be prepared to work together on this important issue.

“I was one of 90 backbench MPs who wrote to the PM before Christmas urging her to look at cross Party working to make sure that our NHS, care and public health systems are properly resourced and I will continue to push for this to happen.”