Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

Within my right hon. Friend’s question is, I think, how we get more flow into hospital: once bed occupancy goes above a certain threshold, lack of flow is the key interaction that drives inefficiency within hospitals. That is why we are putting in the extra capacity. It is also a question of reducing the numbers going to hospital in the first place and speeding up the discharge of those who are fit to leave. Whereas at the moment someone might sit on a ward for three days because they have to have antibiotics every day, if one continuous dose of antibiotics can be administered through new kit at home, not only is that a much better patient experience but it relieves pressure on the wards.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I welcome the additional transparency on data for 12-hour wait times, because it is only by shining a light on the problem that we can see just how bad it is, but the targets set out in the plan today are utterly woeful. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine says that we need 13,000 beds; the Government are offering 5,000. The percentage of patients who are seen within four hours should be 95%; the Government are aiming for 76%. Heart-attack and stroke victims should be seen within 18 minutes; the Government are aiming for only 30 minutes. Surely the truth is that this woeful lack of ambition means that our emergency care services are themselves on life support and that patients will continue to die needlessly for a very long time to come.

[Steve Barclay]

First, I thank the hon. Lady for recognising the steps that we have taken on transparency. That has been an area of challenge and it is part of my wider commitment to transparency.

The ambition of the targets has to be realistic, and targets are not a ceiling but a floor. It is about saying, “How do we set a target that is realistic?” Of course, we will aim to do better than that, but it is about setting something that the system feels is achievable, because that in turn gets much more buy-in.

On beds, we are increasing capacity, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) alluded to. What it is really about is freeing up patients who are fit for discharge from hospital, who should not be there and would actually prefer to be getting care at home. It is about looking at the end-to-end bed capacity, not simply at beds within the acute sites.