A and E Waiting Times

Jamie Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, for what is, I think, the first time, Mr Hollobone. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) for securing the debate. She has an exceptionally powerful voice in these matters, and all of us, on both sides of the House, have a common interest in ensuring it is heard not only today, but throughout this Parliament. I pay tribute to the work she is doing not only in her own right, but in tandem with the Government.

I also pay tribute to the work other Members who have spoken undertake on behalf of their constituents in fighting for A and E services in their constituencies. It would be remiss of me not to thank my local A and E unit at the West Cumberland hospital for saving my life probably twice in the past two years, although I appreciate that that makes me sound careless.

Before I begin, I wonder whether the Minister can answer this fairly simple question. What have Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, North West London Hospitals NHS Trust, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust all got in common? I am more than happy to give way to the Minister if she would like to hazard a guess.

[Anna Soubry]

These are serious matters and should be above such cheap party politics. The hon. Gentleman clearly knows the answer to his question, and is asking me to speculate. Given that the debate is about accident and emergency, no doubt the answer is that their waiting times are longer. The Government accept that, and also agree that it is not acceptable; and we are doing something about it. If the hon. Gentleman wants to play party politics, that is against him, not against anything else.

[Mr Reed]

That was a regrettable answer, and did not become the Minister. She clearly does not know the answer. I wonder, as do, I think, many hon. Members, whether the Government know the answer to the question. It is that those trusts have missed the A and E target for major type 1 units—

[Anna Soubry]

I just said that.

[Mr Reed]

Can she tell me for how long?

[Anna Soubry]

I am not playing silly games with our NHS.

[Mr Reed]

They have missed it for each of the last 29 weeks. These points are not silly; they are matters of fact.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Reed]

Of course; I look forward to an answer.

[Anna Soubry]

The point that I am making is that the hon. Gentleman is playing silly games with serious matters. Other right hon. and hon. Members have addressed the issue positively, with compassion, but he is just playing silly party political games.

[Mr Reed]

I now know what it feels like to be handbagged.

[Anna Soubry]

That is sexist.

[Mr Reed]

I do not think it is sexist at all.

Does the Minister know how many times her local trust has missed its A and E target, since the end of September? [Interruption.] I will tell her. Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has missed its target for 17 weeks since September.

[Anna Soubry]

Would the hon. Gentleman care to refresh his memory? If we refer to the most recent statistics produced by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust for the A and E department at the Queen’s medical centre, we can compare those for the week commencing 14 April this year with those for the week commencing 15 April last year. Last year 440 patients failed to be treated or seen within the four-hour target, whereas this year the figure had fallen to 259.

[Mr Reed]

I note that the Minister prepared an answer, and I am grateful for that.

Major accident and emergency units—type 1 facilities, nationally—have missed the target for at least the last six months, and all A and E units, including minor incident units, have not hit the target for 12 weeks in a row. If anyone needs help analysing the figures, I would be happy to oblige. They are easy to find and they reveal some interesting points. For example, I wonder whether hon. Members know that only one trust with a major accident and emergency unit in England has hit its target every week since the Secretary of State took his position. That is relegation form, and if this were a football match the cry from the crowd would be “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Before the Minister attempts yet again to dismiss those statistics, I hope she will take a moment to attend to what has been said by the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, by Dr Clifford Mann of the College of Emergency Medicine, and by David Behan of the Care Quality Commission. Earlier this month, Dr Peter Carter, of the Royal College of Nursing said:

“These figures are yet more proof of a system running at capacity, and patients are suffering as a result. Our members are regularly telling us that pressure on the system is rising while staffing levels fall, and as a result any increase in demand results in unacceptable waits for patients who are already going through a difficult time.”

Dr Clifford Mann, of the College of Emergency Medicine said:

“We are seeing...ambulances queuing outside departments, and patients waiting too long on trolleys before they can be admitted to hospital.”

The Care Quality Commission said:

“It is disappointing that people have said they have to wait longer to be treated than four years ago. People should be seen, diagnosed, treated and admitted or discharged as quickly as possible”.

Like me, the Royal College of Nursing, the College of Emergency Medicine and the Care Quality Commission will be appalled that the key performance indicators for the NHS, such as A and E waiting times, are getting steadily worse. In the past six months, 582,811 people waited more than four hours in major A and E units, compared with 420,921 for the same period in the previous year. That is an increase of 161,890 people. That is not silly: it is a question of people’s lives. Those figures relate to people in need who did not get treatment in the time when they needed it. They represent more than 500,000 extra waiting hours in one year. People will find it hard to stomach the fact that there are now about 5,000 fewer nurses than there were in 2010, at a time when, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned, demand in our A and E units is increasing.

One way to get the figure down—it has been touched on already in the debate—would be to offer services for people with non-emergency ailments, so that they do not feel the need to travel to an A and E department. However, instead of NHS Direct being used as a tool for easing pressure on A and E departments, the roll-out of NHS 111 has turned into a trade marked Government shambles. Patients calling the new 111 service wait hours for advice. One patient waited 11 hours and 29 minutes for a call back. No wonder they feel that they have to go to A and E, when they cannot trust a telephone service with such an inadequate response rate.

Accident and emergency departments are a litmus test, or a barometer, for the performance of the NHS as a whole. If people are waiting in A and E, it means that there are too few beds or too few staff to cope with demand. That is just a fact of health service planning. If there are too few beds, it is because community services are being cut and patients who should be at home are kept in hospital. That reverberates back through the entire system. If patients who could be at home are in hospital, beds are occupied. If beds are occupied, A and E staff cannot admit patients. If A and Es are full, paramedics cannot hand over patients. If patients are queuing in the back of ambulances, those ambulances cannot respond to a potentially serious call-out. One failure leads to another. Each compounds the other. That is what is so serious about the debate. It is not just about the patient sitting in A and E for hours on end; the statistics I have highlighted show much more than that—the experiences of patients throughout the entire system.

[Martin Horwood]

In my remarks I suggested another possible factor in the current problems of emergency departments: the difficulty in recruiting emergency doctors. That may have something to do with the attractiveness of emergency medicine as a specialty—the long hours, and so on. However, it also obviously dates back to the training numbers that I am afraid prevailed under the Labour Government. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there may be some such responsibility, dating back several years, in relation to attracting sufficient numbers into training for emergency medicine?

[Mr Reed]

I expect the Minister to talk about new doctors in the NHS when she replies to the debate; and, of course, we trained those doctors. We commissioned, paid for and put in place the training of those doctors, so I take what the hon. Gentleman says seriously. I also commend him for being the only Member of Parliament from either of the coalition parties to attend the debate to defend the Government’s record.

The statistics highlight more than the simple numbers: they show the experience of patients throughout the system. One person waiting in A and E can reflect one person in a bed on a ward and another waiting at home for an ambulance. I hope the Minister will acknowledge and accept that, and explain what the Government plan to do. It is essential that they explicitly acknowledge the problems faced by accident and emergency in England. Constant denials do them no credit. They must acknowledge the scale of the problem before any solutions can be introduced.

The NHS in England is completely different from the NHS in Wales. I expect the Government will be tempted to compare the two, but I want to address the issue head on. The reality is that Welsh Ministers are dealing with a £2.1 billion real-terms cut to their budgets. Yet, despite that, they have still managed to protect NHS services. There are now more GPs working in Wales than in 2010, and the number of nurses, midwives and health visitors has remained consistent. That is in stark contrast to England, where nurse numbers are falling. I am sure that hon. Members who have heard such tired comparisons over and over would be interested to know that there are differences in the way A and E waiting times are measured in the two countries, and in how frequently performance is measured.

Before any comparison is made—and I hope that none will be—I want to point out that it is misleading to try to make a direct comparison. However, it is fair to say that all parts of the UK are experiencing increased pressures on A and E. The key difference is that in Wales, Labour are doing something about it, whereas in England the coalition is sitting on its hands. In Wales, 270 additional beds were opened this winter to cope with demand, easing pressure throughout the system. The Welsh Government have also agreed an all-Wales action plan for unscheduled care, which means that health boards must ensure that they have sufficient capacity to meet demand.

Will the Minister inform us today what the Government plan to do to help A and E services in England? When and where will they start to provide such help, and how much will it cost?

That aside, will the Minister also answer a few important questions on A and E waiting times? First, will she explain why, when demand is clearly so high and the current services are at breaking point, the Government have handed P45s to almost 5,000 nurses? Will she also explain why the Secretary of State chose a period of intense demand and structural reorganisation to roll out the 111 service when it was clearly not ready to be rolled out?

May I tempt the Minister to speculate on the causes of that rise in A and E waiting times? Does she agree that a combination of inadequate staffing levels, a distracting reorganisation of the NHS and deep cuts to council care budgets is the principal reason for the sharp increase in A and E waiting times? If she does not agree that they are having a major impact on the NHS, can she explain why the Government think that fewer nurses and a distracting reorganisation have improved services?

The problems that others and I have outlined today are well known to many, but they are still sadly neglected by the Government. Despite its imperfections and its many real challenges, the NHS remains one of the best models of national health care in the world. It is filled with dedicated professionals who believe passionately in the aims and values of the service, but it is clear that an expensive, unwanted and unloved reorganisation, combined with Government-induced staff shortages, are causing and have caused deterioration in performance. That is unfair on health care professionals, and, far more importantly, it is unfair on patients. I look forward to the Minister explaining in detail how her Government intend to get a grip and bring all A and E services in England back up to national standards.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I have just about eight minutes to respond to all the valuable contributions made in this debate. I will not be able to answer all the questions, but I will write to anyone who has asked a question that I cannot answer.

Obviously, I begin by paying tribute to the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) for securing this debate and for the way she is championing the cause of the patient. She will not hesitate to leave no stone unturned. As many others know, she is doing great work in leading our independent review of NHS complaints. She mentioned just some of the many cases that have come her way. She did not give dates, but I suspect the cases were not all fresh by any means, because, as she, I and many others recognise, this is by no means a new phenomenon; it is a serious problem that requires serious action, which the Government are taking. Would it not be refreshing and brilliant if we could have a debate on a serious issue without falling into the trap of cheap party politics, which, unfortunately, has been a little evident in some, but mercifully not all, the speeches? As the right hon. Lady said in her speech, there are no easy answers.

Some important points have been raised. We know that there is a problem, and we recognise that. It is not uncommon for the four-hour waiting time standards not to be met, especially during the winter period. That happened under the previous Government as well as under this Government. Indeed, in 2008-09 there were 23 weeks in which the waiting time target was breached, and it was breached during a further 14 weeks in 2009-10 up to May 2010. We know that those problems continue. We want to know and understand why, and we want to take quick action.

[Mr Jamie Reed]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anna Soubry]

I have only six minutes to address all the contributions, so the hon. Gentleman had better be quick.

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. This is a very important point. Does she accept that Labour’s A and E target for hospitals was tougher than the one set by her Government?

[Anna Soubry]

No. I am not going to go into all that in the short time that is available to me. We accept that waiting times are a problem—we are not trying to hide from that, and we are up for transparency—and I will address the data in a minute.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) rightly identifies the seasonal nature of waiting times. He speaks with passion about changes in his constituency, and rightly so. It is right and proper that people who have such concerns, as other hon. Members have said, come to this place to champion the cause of the health service within their own communities, especially when it faces reconfiguration. He spoke about 111, which is an important thing to talk about when considering some of the causes that may contribute to the unacceptable failure to hit targets. I know that the data are being monitored on a daily basis by NHS England, and the deputy chief executive of NHS England is meeting twice a week to consider what is happening and to make sure that action is taken to ensure that any problems are addressed.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point on the difficulty of filling posts, and I will write to him on that because I know it is a problem. I also know that action is being taken by some of the royal colleges, and it is probably best if I give a fuller answer, because he makes a very important point. Of course, I can say that the Keogh review is considering exactly the other problems that he mentioned. As the Secretary of State announced, the Keogh review, which has been alluded to, will report next month. All those matters will be reviewed by Sir Bruce, and it is much to be hoped that some positive forward-thinking will come out of that.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) raised various issues. I am particularly concerned that she says she is not getting the answers to the questions she has quite properly asked. I think there is sometimes a problem with hon. Members not going in the first instance to the actual hospital, trust or whoever it might be. Her point, and it is a good point well made, is that when she asked my Department, she did not get those figures, and I will make further inquiries.

Only today I saw a question from the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) asking precisely what the figures are for her hospital in Sherwood and, as it happens, the hospital she and I effectively share, the Queen’s medical centre A and E department. I have given those figures, and I want to set the record straight because, in fact, for the same week last year in Sherwood, 75 people waited more than four hours; this year the figure is 266.