NHS Winter Pressures

Andy Carter Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right to point to the real pressures at Kettering which, as he says, I have visited. Not only am I keen to see it get its fair share, but I know that he will absolutely champion it through his good offices to ensure that that is the case, as he always does. He also raises an important point that the pressure of an ageing population is not universally distributed but is more intense in certain areas than others. Again, in our scrutiny of the data, I am keen to look at how that plays out in the variation in performance between trusts because, as I said, 15 trusts account for 56% of ambulance handover delays and there is significant variation across the NHS. Understanding what is driving that, such as different ageing profiles between different areas, is a key part of our recovery plans.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I spent Friday morning at Warrington Hospital to see the challenges that A&E department staff are facing. One senior clinician said to me that it was the busiest he had seen it in 30 years. The entire hospital was full—there were no beds—and last Monday, 90 people were waiting in A&E to be admitted to a bed. The Secretary of State knows that I am waiting for an announcement on whether a new hospital can be funded in Warrington, and I am keen to hear when that announcement will come, but can he reassure my constituents that the funding announced today will support the staff in Warrington Hospital and the social care staff in Warrington and ensure that the pressures that they are facing will be addressed immediately?

[Steve Barclay]

Yes, I can; that is the whole purpose of the announcement. Although my hon. Friend campaigns assiduously for the new hospital, he will concede that, regardless of the decision, that would take time. To his point about the hospital being full, there is an immediate challenge about how we get additional capacity into the emergency department so that it can operate more effectively, because if there are too many people, that impedes an emergency department’s ability to operate effectively. There is also a challenge about how we address the wider occupancy in the hospital as a whole, because that is at the core of getting flow into the system. That is the essence of the feedback that we have listened to and taken on board from the clinical community —as he did on Friday—particularly within emergency departments. Today’s announcement speaks to the exact issue that he raises.