Ambulance Response Times

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point: we should be looking at this in a systemic way. In fact, I did my PhD in a department of system science, where you look at problems in a holistic way—rather than analysing individual problems, you look at the whole system. We found odd unintended consequences. For example, a friend forgot his inhaler, could not get one from the chemist, could not get one from the A&E and, in the end, had to call out an ambulance. There are a number of times when ambulances are called out needlessly, and that is on top of the pressures we are already facing due to Covid. We are tackling the backlog, which, hopefully, will also reduce ambulance waiting times.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that every ambulance service in the country is currently on black alert? The problem goes both upstream, into the community, and downstream, into the hospitals and social care. What are the Government doing to decrease the number of older people being blue-lighted into A&E because they cannot get the social care services to keep them safe in their own homes?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. We are all aware of the difficulties in different parts of the system. We have invested £450 million to upgrade A&E facilities in more than 120 separate NHS hospitals ahead of last winter, and this is being used to boost the physical capacity of A&E through expanded waiting areas, increasing the number of treatment cubicles, reducing overcrowding, et cetera. This is alongside an additional £1.8 million to place more hospital ambulance liaison officers at the most challenging acute trusts to help address the long delays, to reduce ambulance queueing and to get crews back on the road quickly.