Urgent and Emergency Care

Ben Spencer Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Member makes a very fair point. Within the question he raises is the unmet need where an ambulance does not reach a patient in the community, as opposed to the known risk once the patient is within the hospital trust’s purview. On capacity in A&E, as I touched on in my statement, we put in £450 million at the 2020 spending review to upgrade A&E facilities at 120 trusts.

With respect to the hon. Member’s specific point, he may be aware of the letter that the NHS medical director Professor Stephen Powis and the chief nurse Ruth May sent at the time of the heatwave about where risk sits within hospitals. The taskforce has been doing further work on pre-cohorting, post-cohorting and observation bays so that we can better free up that ambulance capacity and get it back on the road.

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly the focus on retention, training and recruitment. Earlier this year, I met people from the excellent Chertsey Make Ready Centre. They told me about the challenges that they face with staff wellbeing and staff retention, which are compounded by the horrendous abuse that they receive almost daily. Sadly, it is not limited to our paramedic workers: I met staff at the Crouch Oak practice in Addlestone in my constituency recently, and we spoke about some of the vile messages and threats that they have received. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking our health and care service workers for their fantastic work and in condemning the vile abuse that, sadly, some of them receive from a bunch of miscreants?

[Steve Barclay]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in thanking the staff for their work and in condemning the completely unacceptable violence, intimidation and abuse to which people are subjected. There should be zero tolerance of that from any hospital trust.