NHS: Long-term Strategy

Holly Lynch Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I want to start by sharing the experiences of my own office manager. He has two children who are one and four. They both became increasingly unwell on a weekend. They had temperatures just below 40°C and were becoming lethargic, with the four-year-old complaining of a sore throat and the younger having spots on her tongue.

Concerned as all parents are about the tragic fatal cases of children with strep A, and with the GP closed, they decided to call 111. They waited one and a half hours for someone to answer the call, and were told that the symptoms were such that they required a call back from a GP within six hours. Shortly after ending the call, my office manager received a text:

“Dear Parent/Guardian, due to unprecedented numbers of calls, we are unable to provide a call back at this time, and your case has been closed.”

As the children’s condition worsened, into the evening and on a weekend, the parents became increasingly concerned for their children and felt that they had no choice other than to take them to A&E. After an eight-hour wait in A&E, into the early hours, an exhausted doctor came to the waiting room and told patients that he was incredibly sorry but there was no way they could see everyone, and that anyone who could possibly leave should do so. My office manager was faced with the decision reluctantly to take his children home.

In his speech to the nation, the Prime Minister asked people to judge him on his results, saying,

“judge us on the effort we put in and the results we achieve.”

He is not seeking to be in government; he is the Prime Minister from a party that has been in government for 13 years. We are judging him by the results. During his interview at the weekend, he repeatedly refused to say whether he uses private healthcare, insisting it is not really relevant. I know he clarified that point at Prime Minister’s questions today, but the Government’s response to the crisis so far has not reflected the sheer panic and hopelessness that people, and parents in particular, feel if their loved ones and children are seriously unwell, and the NHS is so broken that they cannot get any help.