NHS Corridor Care

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

That is absolutely right—the hon. Member makes a valid point. People can be enduring a heart attack; they can be losing a baby; they can have had a road traffic accident and be lying on a trolley, blocked and collared, or lying on a board and looking up at the ceiling, wondering when they might make it into the scanner. People will definitely be having a time in hospital that will be etched on their memory, and sadly for many patients, and many loved ones, that is the last day they will ever see—the A&E will be the last place they know.

In the NHS we want that experience to be as comfortable and reassuring as possible. We want the best possible care, delivered in the fastest possible time, to patients who are treated fairly, efficiently, and with compassion and dignity. Frankly, that is impossible in a corridor, even with the greatest will in the world. In my A&E at St George’s hospital we have patients in corridors, as we do across the country, but we have nurses who are there and dedicated to check their observations, ask if they need pain relief, and try to deliver—and they do—the best possible gold-standard care. But there is no privacy in a corridor, or in a cupboard, or anywhere where there should be, and that simply is not right. In emergency departments across the country, regardless of data that some trusts try to put forward to show that it is in only a certain number of places, we know from our inboxes that corridor care is everywhere.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. She has spoken about some of the impacts of this issue. My 80-odd-year-old mum was recently admitted to Airedale hospital with acute respiratory issues. She had to wait in a chair for over 12 hours, alongside my dad, in a very undignified way. Does my hon. Friend agree that ideally we should be preventing admissions for older and frail patients, and does she believe that the stronger proactive primary and community care services proposed by the Government with neighbourhood health teams could help to prevent some admissions for older and frail elderly people like my mum?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I hope my hon. Friend’s mum is making a swift and healthy recovery, and I am sorry to hear that that was her family’s experience. I agree that prioritising care for the frailer, elder population can often be dealt with more effectively before someone comes to hospital. I also know that my hospital of St George’s in Tooting has a special dedicated frailty unit that goes a long way in speeding things up for people. Good pilots are going on across the country, where care can be taken to our elderly community before people come in. Tackling social care is something I am coming to in my speech, because we could not have a speech on corridor care without a huge nod—or an entire body bend—to social care and the need to fix it.

While this situation is extremely hard for patients and their families, the toll it takes on healthcare staff is huge. By healthcare staff I do not just mean doctors such as myself, but nurses, porters, healthcare assistants and cleaners—we are one big family in the NHS, and no one job is more important than any other. We are unable to do any of our roles without all the others, and for that we are truly grateful. Knowing that they might be caring for a patient in their mid-80s, who is trying to hold back tears because they do not want to upset anybody very publicly in a corridor, is absolutely heartbreaking and takes a toll on their mental health. Our nurses, doctors and all the staff I have mentioned are going home absolutely burnt out—this is not what they trained and studied for, and not what they go to work to deliver. They go to work to deliver the best possible gold-standard care for the community that they care about.

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[Naushabah Khan]

The hon. Member makes a very powerful point. I will come to adult social care in a moment.

We simply cannot end corridor care at the front door of the hospital when the back door remains jammed shut. I welcome the steps taken to reform adult social care—a £3.7 billion funding boost for local authorities—but it is clear that we must go further. I eagerly await Baroness Casey’s independent commission on adult social care. However, I am concerned that the review’s terms of reference call for recommendations to be implemented in a phased way over a decade. That is simply not fast enough. Social care reform must work in lockstep with NHS reform. A commission reporting in 2026 and 2028, with implementation stretched over a decade and beyond, will not be able to enact the scale of change needed to meet our targets. I urge the Government to move at pace.

[Anna Dixon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Naushabah Khan]

No, I will not take any further interventions, thank you.

Lastly, I would like to pay tribute to the nurses, doctors and staff who keep Medway hospital in my constituency of Gillingham and Rainham running. In this House, we all receive correspondence from frustrated members of the public regarding the state of our NHS. However, it is the staff who carry the moral injury of apologising, shift after shift, for conditions that they did not create.

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[Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let us be clear from the beginning: corridor care is unacceptable. No patient should be treated in a corridor. No family should watch a loved one receive care without the privacy and dignity that they deserve. No member of our brilliant NHS staff should be put in the impossible position of delivering care in an environment that they know is not right. I know how deeply my constituents feel about this, and hardly a week goes by without someone contacting me about their experience of Warrington hospital. They tell me about the kindness of the staff despite incredibly difficult circumstances; others tell me about the length of time that their loved ones have waited to be seen, and those experiences are reflected in the figures.

In May this year, Warrington hospital recorded the second-worst 12-hour A&E performance in the entire country. Those figures are deeply concerning, and it would be wrong of me to pretend otherwise, but if we only talk about A&E waiting times, we miss the bigger picture. Corridor care does not begin in a corridor: it begins when patients are medically fit to leave hospital but the care or support that they need at home is not yet in place. It begins when patient flow slows down, leaving emergency departments carrying pressures that they were never designed to absorb. It begins when a town like Warrington grows significantly without its infrastructure keeping up.

[Anna Dixon]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that it is not about fixing the problem at the front door; it is about fixing the problem at the back door. Does she agree that closer integration of health and social care is part of the answer to enable that flow through hospitals out into the community? During the summing up, I hope the Minister might carefully consider my amendment to the Health Bill on health and care integration—my hon. Friend might also look at that.

[Sarah Hall]

I absolutely agree; the NHS system as a whole is very fragmented, and the lack of connectivity is a big issue. Social care is a core component and it needs to be a priority going forward.