NHS Services (Access)

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is rightly outlining this Government’s failures on health. Is he aware that towns such as Warrington face a triple whammy, whereby the number of full-time equivalent GPs is down, ambulance response times are up and yet while this Government last year gave £10 million to Cheshire West and Chester to deal with winter pressures, they gave absolutely nothing to the hospital in my constituency? Does he think that decision was politically rather than health based?

[Andy Burnham]

Many questions are raised by that decision. Areas of the country where services were being run well would say that they did not get money and instead the money was given to areas where things were not working properly. The situation my hon. Friend describes is what is happening across the NHS in England. The Government have cut the GP budget, the mental health budget and the social care budget, and all that has led to increased pressure on hospitals. There are too many people in hospitals right now in England. The wards are full and people cannot be sent back home because the social care is not there. So the wards do not become free, and A and E cannot admit people to the wards because no beds are available. A and E therefore becomes blocked. Ambulances cannot hand patients over to A and E so they end up queuing outside, meaning that ambulance response times get worse. That is the knock-on effect of the Government’s policies across the NHS, and the deteriorations she is seeing for her constituents are mirrored right across the country.