NHS staff are cheating to hit the government's targets, a report by an influential committee of MPs has said.

A report by the public administration select committee, On Target? Government by Measurement, has revealed allegations of cheating, perverse consequences, and distortions in pursuit of targets.

Accident and emergency (A&E) departments were “prone to creative accounting,” the report said. The BMA, the Royal College of Nursing, and the Patients Association told the committee how “targets for A&E maximum waiting times were being circumvented by imaginative fixes where trolleys either had their wheels …