Ambulance and Emergency Department Waiting Times

Duncan Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) very much for obtaining this very important debate. The very first subject that I raised when I was a newly elected MP was the state of ambulance response times in North Norfolk. That is a particular worry for me, because up on the North Norfolk coast I have the oldest constituency demographic in the entire country, and Wells, a beautiful seaside village, has had the very dubious honour of consecutively having the worst response times. Over the last few years, whereas the category 1 responses have flatlined, the C2 and C3 response times have got worse. Constituents are coming to me almost every other day to tell me about the appalling situation that they have encountered in calling an ambulance. The worst cases are of people having strokes in the back of their car while family members are driving them to the hospital. When we hear those accounts, we get some sense of just how bad the picture is.

I agree with many of the comments made by the hon. Member, but we have to recognise that this is not a simple issue that can be solved with a single magic bullet, and it is certainly not all the fault of the ambulance service, which is working under extreme pressure. All our health systems at the moment are really buckling under the issues that have been caused by the pandemic. That is the case in social care systems, mental health care and dentistry. There are serious problems in all places at the moment.

Let us take the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, which is my emergency department. It has the honour—I call it an honour; it is dreadful—of being the worst in the east of England. In the first 13 weeks of the year, 723 equivalent ambulance shifts were lost. The third worst performing facility for ambulance response times is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, with 442 equivalent shifts lost. Both ED units that serve my constituency are in the top three worst facilities in the entire east of England. It is a huge problem, with hundreds upon hundreds of hours lost every single week when ambulances are queueing up outside a hospital because they cannot get patients out of the trucks and into the A&E department. Equally, the social care system is so poor that they cannot get people back into the community, with the respite that they need.

We know that there are serious issues about sickness; there are rising levels of covid. But there are other issues also. I am told that 50% of the calls that are made to the ambulance service in Norfolk are calls that simply should not have been made; they could have been for something that was not life-critical. That is coupled with ambulances pulled off the patch to go and service other areas; actually, there would be enough ambulances in North Norfolk if they were used within North Norfolk. That just adds to the problem.

However, the most pressing issue is the sheer numbers—the hundreds of hours lost every week from ambulances queueing up. The question is why, and it is a very easy answer: 95%-plus occupancy all the time is the problem. We simply cannot have the capacity in place. It is no good saying, “Well, if we just build a bigger hospital or build a bigger ED, that will solve the problem.” I do not think it will, because the problem is so multifaceted.

The hon. Member for Bath was right: transparency of data is incredibly important. But when we drill down into the information, we realise that all the issues that I have set out are working in tandem; they are all conspiring to cause the problem. In the last minute or so available to me, I want to ask what we do about it, and there are some practical suggestions that I want the Government to take really seriously.

First, the role of our community first responders should not be underestimated. We are not treating this problem seriously enough. Why on earth are we not paying community first responders, as is the case with the retained fire service? We are asking volunteers in our community, who have to be fit men and women and who, frankly, are probably not going to be people approaching their retirement age of nearly 70. Not enough people are going to be volunteering in our communities, and that is why we suffer with the numbers. If we really got some energy behind this in order to recruit these people, help them and make it economical for them to do it, we would see, I think, uptake of that. They are the first line of defence in helping to support people.

The second issue we should be looking at is rapid response vehicles. A rapid response vehicle was nearly taken away from North Norfolk, which was absolutely appalling. These vehicles offer far better economic value than ambulances. The clue is in the name—they are able to rapidly respond. They can be stationed virtually anywhere and help suffering patients while an ambulance gets to them. They are incredibly important in rural areas, so I ask the Minister to take those issues seriously.

Finally, I will be spending the first week of the forthcoming recess volunteering with the East of England Ambulance Service so that I can see at first hand the problems it faces. Those who work there are heroic people, but, my word, they need some help.