Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

I am happy to inform the hon. Lady that we are meeting the 95% target nationally for the A and E wait. On the most recent figures available, 96% of patients were seen within that period—96 out of every 100 patients are seen within four hours in A and E. The key difference between this Government and the last Labour Government is that we trust clinicians to ensure that they prioritise those patients in greatest need ahead of purely meeting targets and ticking boxes.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

As winter bites, the NHS faces its toughest time of year, but there is mounting evidence that the Secretary of State has left it unprepared. For 105 of his 133 days in office, the Government have missed their own A and E target for major A and Es. Last week, for the first time, the figure fell below 90%. Right now in A and Es up and down England, ambulances are stuck in queues outside, patients are on trolleys in corridors, and people are waiting to be seen for hours on end. Does the Minister accept that there is a growing crisis in our A and Es, and if he does, what is he doing about it?

[Dr Poulter]

The right hon. Gentleman is good at putting across figures based on brief snapshots in the year. We know that on an annual basis we are meeting the target, and that 96% of patients are being seen on time in A and Es. We have made allowances for winter pressures, which we know are always difficult during the flu season every year, and we have put aside £330 million to ensure that we support the NHS during those winter pressures. Let me make it clear to the right hon. Gentleman that it is wrong to try and distort figures based on outcomes from a snapshot of just a few days or a week. It is important to put across the clear picture, which is that the Government are meeting targets in the NHS and patients are being treated in a much more timely manner than under the previous Government.

[Andy Burnham]

I suggest to the Minister that he needs to get out on the ground in the NHS a bit more. The figures I gave him were for major A and Es. If he got out more, he would realise that his complacency, which we have just seen at the Dispatch Box, is not justified. Let us look at Milton Keynes, which was identified by the Care Quality Commission as one of the 17 understaffed hospitals, and where last week just 72% of patients were seen within four hours. Milton Keynes is one of 15 trusts in England where A and E performance plummeted below 80%. These are the kind of figures that we have not seen in the NHS since the bad old days of the mid-1990s. Ministers like to blame nurses, but it is time they started accepting some responsibility. Will the Minister today ensure that all A and Es in England have enough staff to get safely through the winter?