Oral Answers to Questions

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for the work that she and the all-party parliamentary group on spinal cord injury have done on the issue. I would be more than happy to meet them.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

11. What steps her Department is taking to improve accident and emergency waiting times in east Lancashire.

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

Just over a year ago, we set out a plan to improve urgent and emergency care. The plan is working. At East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, 78% of A&E patients in March were seen within four hours. That is 4.5 percentage points better than last year—the biggest year-on-year improvement outside the pandemic since 2010. We know that there is more to do; that is why we are working with the NHS on year 2 of the urgent and emergency care recovery plan.

[Antony Higginbotham]

I am grateful to the Minister for that response, and grateful to her for agreeing to meet me and other local MPs to discuss the emergency care situation in east Lancashire. Could I ask her to go one step further? Perhaps she and even the Secretary of State could visit Burnley General Teaching Hospital in my constituency, meet the trust, and see what more we can do there, partly to reverse the disastrous decision of the last Labour Government to close the A&E there?

[Helen Whately]

I commend my hon. Friend and other east Lancashire colleagues for their campaigning on this matter. I look forward to the meeting we are going to have to discuss the performance of his local A&E, and I thank him very much for the invitation to visit.