NHS waiting lists rose back above one million in April, the latest figures have revealed.

The Department of Health put the rise down to a "seasonal" blip having hailed a historic fall below the landmark figure in March.

Releasing the figures on Friday, the government said that the statistics bucked the long term trend but were still the second-lowest for a decade.

The total number of patients waiting to be admitted to NHS hospitals in England increased by 9300 between the March and the end of April to stand at 1,001,300.

Health secretary Alan Milburn has tried to shift the focus away from waiting lists and on to waiting times, but there too there was more mixed news.

There were 134 people who had been waiting longer than a year for all types of operation at the end of April - a rise of more than 80 per cent on last month's figures.

A key government target has been to eliminate 12-month waiting by the beginning of April, but 73 were still in that position as the deadline passed.

Milburn said 29 of these were waiting at just one hospital - the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust - and this was being investigated.

The Conservatives sought to capitalise on the minister's misfortune, a day after a report raised doubts about the whole NHS target setting culture.

"Only a day after the Audit Commission's critical report on the NHS, waiting times have again deteriorated," shadow health secretary Liam Fox said.

"It is now quite clear that Labour's failure to undertake radical reform means that more taxpayers' money will continue to be wasted and Britain's standards of health care will lag further behind the rest of Europe's."

However Milburn, releasing details of £50 million worth of extra funding for orthopaedics operations, said that patients were beginning to see the results of extra investment in the NHS.

"Waiting times had been rising for decades in the NHS. They are now coming down," he said.

The health department was still on course to deliver the promises set out in the 10-year NHS Plan, he insisted.

"By 2005 no-one should have to wait longer than six months for an operation," Milburn said.

"We are now starting to see real improvements across the board."

The Liberal Democrats said that the target setting was damaging clinical care, following a damaging report from the British Medical Association showing that doctors were making decisions based on quotas rather than medical needs.

"Liberal Democrats have called consistently for an end to waiting list numbers and their perverse effects," health spokesman Dr Evan Harris said.

"The government has spent five years fiddling the figures and spinning the news."