National Health Service workers hold placards at a picket line outside University College Hospital in central London on Sept 20, 2023 as thousands of medical consultants working in England for the country's NHS went on strike over below-inflation pay offers and heavy workloads. (PHOTO / AFP)

LONDON – The National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom is "crumbling before our eyes" as a result of underinvestment, a heavily critical report warned on Friday.

"The physical edifice that is the NHS is quite literally crumbling before our eyes. There was nothing inevitable about this heartbreaking crisis," said Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons which produced the report.

"It can be laid squarely at the door of the decision to raid budgets reserved for maintenance and investment in favor of day-to-day spending. We are now seeing the consequences of this short-termism visited on patients and services," Hillier said.

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In the report, lawmakers who serve on the committee voiced concern at a lack of progress on a multi-million-dollar New Hospital Program which in 2020 committed to build 40 new hospitals by 2030.

An NHS sign is seen at the Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester, Britain, April 1, 2022. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

"Very little has happened from the perspective of patients since the government's original commitment. It is highly unlikely even to construct the 32 new hospitals that it is now aiming to complete by 2030, after the commitment to build all 40 by then was abandoned," reads the committee's report.

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The committee said it was now calling for the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) to urgently examine how the new hospital program can be made to deliver some tangible results for patients.

"Underinvestment in the NHS estate has now resulted in a situation that requires urgent action," the committee's report said.