UNIONS have accused the government of “putting lives at risk” with its decision to scrap ambulance response targets.

Less urgent response time targets, implemented to ensure ambulance crews reached patients within 19 minutes, have been axed as part of the coalition’s radical overhaul of emergency care.

Ambulance services will still have to attend three-quarters of immediately life-threatening emergencies within eight minutes.

But emergency operators will now have to decide, through a series of questions, whether or not an ambulance is sent straight away.

Dorset GMB branch secretary Gary Pattison said: “I’m absolutely horrified that people’s lives and well-being are being put at risk by cuts.

“We were promised there would be no cuts in front line services – that clearly is not the case.”

He added: “This is increasingly starting to look like a major retraction of the public sector, it will inevitably have to be picked up somewhere down the line.

“I don’t think it will be long before we see large scale privatisation through outsourcing.”

However, national clinical director for NHS emergency care Professor Matthew Cooke, told Radio 4’s Today programme that 90 per cent of category A calls (immediately life-threatening) did not require an emergency response.

A South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust spokesman declined to comment at this stage, but stressed its response to the move would be made public sometime next week.