NHS hospitals have met several key health targets but can still improve, the government has claimed.

Health secretary Alan Milburn and NHS chief executive Nigel Crisp launched two new reports detailing how hospitals are dealing with waiting lists and the traditionally busy winter months.

According to the department's figures, only two people with "special circumstances" have now been waiting more than 15 months - down from 80,000 patients last year.

The government is committed to cutting waiting times to 12 months by 2003 and to nine months before the next general election.

Only 500 patients are waiting more than six months for an outpatient consultation - a reduction on the 400,000 patients who were waiting the previous year.

Also 28 out of 32 ambulance services have hit the target of responding to 75 per cent of the most urgent calls in eight minutes.

The minister claimed at least 60 per cent of patients are able to see a GP within 48 hours.

Milburn said the announcement undermined claims that the NHS was incapable of improvement.

"Resources produce results. Today the NHS is growing at twice the rate of the past and faster than any other major European country's health care system. The debate now is about how best we can continue to sustain those rates of growth. I believe on grounds of efficiency and equity it is best done through a tax funded NHS," he said.

"There are, of course, huge problems still in the NHS. We are less than two years into the 10-year programme of investment and reform outlined in the NHS Plan. The effects of decades of under-investment are still taking their toll on services and on staff."

Number 10 supported the launch which, it said, showed "quite revealing changes in the figures".

"Nobody is pretending that all the problems in the NHS have been solved - far from it," said the official spokesman. "But figures show the tanker is beginning to turn around."

Crisp said he believed the results showed the NHS was starting to change. "We have a long way to go and we know that there are many issues we need to tackle. However, we must not underestimate the NHS," he said. "We must not underestimate the people in it. They have shown that they can deliver improvements."

Ahead of a budget that is likely to see a rise in national insurance contributions to fund the NHS, Milburn is anxious to persuade the public that his department is delivering better care levels.

In a bid to head-off critics of the government's plans to extend the role of the private sector, Crisp praised frontline staff who he said will be crucial in delivering a modernised NHS.

He also claimed the figures had partly been achieved through partnerships with the private sector.

The Conservatives have consistently argued that the government's figures have only been achieved because NHS trusts have distorted medical priorities - such as cutting the waiting time for specific cancer treatments - in order to satisfy government demands.

Shadow secretary of state for health, Dr Liam Fox, claimed the figures had only been achieved by creative accounting.

"Despite the recent 30 per cent increase in spending, the level of elective activity actually fell last year. Any reduction in the number of people waiting for treatment is likely to have resulted from fewer people having been put on the waiting list in the first place," he said.

"Worse still, the rise in the number of patients waiting up to 12 months indicates that the government's supposed triumph is simply the result of shuffling patients from one part of the waiting list to another."

Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Dr Evan Harris also criticised the "target culture".

"The government is obsessed with setting hundreds of centrally driven targets. Targets tie the hands of doctors and nurses, forcing them to jump whenever Whitehall says so, and distort clinical priorities. We should have patient-centred care, not market-driven care," he said.

Targets were not being set on the basis of clinical need, Harris claimed, which was costing lives.

"The two-week wait target on suspected cancer referrals is not based on evidence of what will save lives. Money is being taken from life-saving and life-prolonging treatment, to pay for a good soundbite," he said.

"The maximum waiting time targets cost lives as they prioritise long-waiting but stable patients ahead of critically ill, urgent cases. Average waiting times would be a more sensible measure."