NHS waiting lists fell below the politically significant level of one million at the end of March, government figures have revealed.

The Department of Health also claimed on Friday that, but for a handful of cases, it has met its target of having no patient waiting more than a year for treatment.

In the first quarter of 2003 waiting times over a year fell to just 73 cases, an achievement hailed as a 99.7 per cent reduction from March last year.

The number of patients waiting to be admitted to NHS hospitals in England decreased by 35,300 between February and the end of March, to stand at 992,000.

The fall took the headline figure below one million for the first time in a decade.

The good news was trumpeted by health secretary Alan Milburn as vindication of his strategy of increased investment in the NHS and reform of NHS institutions and mechanisms.

Private practice doctors treated 7000 more patients in the year to March than in the previous twelve months, making a significant contribution to the fall in waiting numbers.

However the Conservatives accused Labour of "fiddling" the statistics, while the Liberal Democrats claimed the whole targets culture was flawed.

The government has made health its single biggest priority, risking a one per cent rise in National Insurance contributions to pay for more hospitals, staff and equipment.

"The extra resources and reforms we are putting into the NHS are reducing both waiting times and waiting lists," Milburn said.

"Patients are beginning to see the results in better, faster services. I would like to thank NHS staff for all their hard work in bringing that improvement about."

Ambitious targets have been set for the health service in the ten year NHS Plan, a centrepiece of Labour's 2001 general election manifesto.

"There is a long way to go, but the health service is on course to deliver the NHS Plan, so that by 2005 no one should have to wait longer than six months for an operation," the health secretary said.

"With sustained investment and reform now really beginning to bite in the NHS, in the next year the maximum waiting time will fall further."

Although it eventually met its 1997 pledge to cut waiting lists by 100,000 in the lifetime of a parliament, Labour shifted its focus to waiting times in 2001.

By 2008 Labour has promised that no one will wait more than three months for an operation.

The Conservatives said that the announcement was meaningless as nobody would believe a department that has routinely "fiddled" its figures.

"You'd think the government would have learnt their lesson by now," said shadow health secretary Liam Fox."A survey published today by BMA News reports that two thirds of accident and emergency departments resorted to quick fix measures to meet the government's four hour waiting time target."

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Evan Harris said the use of targets in themselves was damaging patient care.

"It has caused the prioritisation of small cases at the expense of urgent operations and has encouraged the massaging of figures," he said.

"Desperate measures employed by hospital managers include delaying people from getting on the list, or withdrawing treatment altogether to cut the numbers waiting.

"The maximum waiting time targets are not much better. They are dangerous for patients. The person who has been waiting 11 months - whatever their condition - becomes the most urgent patient, not the person who needs an operation because of the severity of their illness."