Government claims that "steady progress " is being made to cut hospital waiting lists have been slammed as more spin by the Liberal Democrats.

Dr Evan Harris, the party's health spokesman, said that new figures published on Friday were bearing less and less relation "even to the government's own priorities".

But health minister John Hutton defended the government health track record, saying "steady progress" was being made.

The figures reveal a mixed picture of waiting lists in the NHS.

Over a million people were waiting to be admitted to hospitals in June, up by nearly 17,000 on the same month a year ago.

However the total number of patients waiting dropped by 770 between last May and June and the figures were down 103,300 compared to March 1997.

Despite a government commitment to set a maximum waiting time for inpatient treatment of six months by the end of 2005 and three months by 2008, the figures revealed that over 20,000 patients were waiting for more than 12 months for treatment in England during June.

The 12 month waiting figures were up 150 on the previous month, but were down 25,600 on the same time last year.

For outpatient waits the government wants to cut delays to three months by the end of 2005, but in the first quarter of 2002/03 a total of 30,600 people were waiting more than five months for their first outpatient appointment.

Hutton said that waiting times were "the public's number one priority" and progress was being made as the government reforms the health service.

"Last year alone 600,000 procedures were carried out in primary care and 1.4 million procedures were carried out in outpatients," said the minister.

"This shows the NHS is getting smarter and patients are benefiting. But we are not complacent. There is still a long way to go.

"We want to see no-one waiting more than six months for an operation and no more than three months for an outpatient appointment by 2005. This is an ambitious target but one we can and must achieve."

The Liberal Democrats condemned the government for describing a 0.07 per cent drop in the total number of people waiting as "steady progress".

"Once you look behind the spin, the government's claims to have made steady progress on waiting lists are ridiculous. Ministers may be on holiday, but spin doctors are working overtime," said Harris.

"This endless ritual of waiting list announcements is becoming less and less credible. The statistics collected bear very little relation even to the government's own priorities, let alone what really matters to patients."

He urged the government to abandon its waiting time targets, which force hospitals to "treat the figures, not the patients".

"We need a patient-centred health service, not a target-centred service. The government's target-obsessed approach means that less urgent, less complicated cases are treated first. Clinically urgent patients will die if their operations are postponed, even by a few weeks," said Harris.

"Artificial political targets are no good for patients and no good for the NHS."

And the Conservatives said that waiting lists were growing despite extra funding.

"It's bad enough that the headline numbers show waiting lists up compared to a year ago. But the sting in the tail is that despite increases in funding of around six per cent per annum, the NHS is standing still. Capacity is not growing, activity is almost stagnant, and bottlenecks exist everywhere," said shadow health secretary Dr Liam Fox.

"The government's monthly charade of ups and downs on the waiting lists is becoming increasingly meaningless. Alan Milburn and Gordon Brown refuse to face up to the divergence between what the Treasury puts in and what comes out in the NHS. The public are not getting value for money."