Ambulance Response Times

Jas Athwal Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jas Athwal (Ilford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) for securing this much-needed debate.

It is incumbent on us to get the waiting times down to the level that we all expect because in a medical emergency every second counts. Every minute without the right care could mean the difference between life or death, independence or disability, full recovery or a lifetime of complications. Yet, across nearly all categories, ambulances are failing to meet their target response times. They are often stuck waiting instead of saving lives, held up by staff shortages or gridlocked outside hospitals with no beds to offload patients. I know this from personal experience because my health trust suffers from it more than most in London. We all have a stake in improving our NHS. We all want to see more beds, more timely treatment and a healthcare system that keeps our friends, neighbours and families healthier for longer.

Last year, Labour�s Budget unlocked �22.6 billion in funding for the NHS over the next two years to pay our doctors fairly, to provide critical hospital beds, and to end the backlog, but for emergency services there remains a critical issue that pumping money into the NHS alone will not fix: staff shortages. Paramedics have one of the highest turnover rates of any profession. Although the number of paramedics has increased since March 2018, absence caused by poor mental health has also increased and so has the number of staff leaving the field all together. Between 2022 and 2023, nearly 7,000 paramedics left their jobs�a 51% increase in leavers from 2019-2020. Without enough staff, ambulances cannot operate at full capacity and response times suffer.

In the current state of the NHS, paramedics are overworked, stretched to the limit and living with the consequences of underfunding and lack of support. Burnout is not just a risk; it is their reality. Who can blame paramedics for wanting to leave? Let us be clear: we have reached this point not because paramedics are not working hard enough, because they are, but because the emergency services have become a safety net. Without preventive measures such as screening, GP appointments or adequate social care, patients get treated only when their condition has escalated to a true emergency, putting undue stress on services. When patients can be treated only once their condition has become an emergency, it is a failure of the system and it increases pressure on our emergency services. It is a bad deal for patients and for those working tirelessly in our emergency services�a deal made possible by 14 years of Tory mismanagement, underfunding and neglect.

If we want better health outcomes and to meet our response time targets, we must make bold structural changes. We need to ensure that paramedics are not carrying the burden of overstretched services in every corner of the NHS. We must ensure that all parts of the NHS function well, from community screenings to adequate support for paramedics, who should be able to continue in their roles and not be driven out because the system has made it unbearable to stay. Every minute counts for overworked paramedics at breaking point and the patients who desperately need their care. I look to the Minister to do the heavy lifting and fix the broken system, which will be the difference between life and death.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I call Nicholas Timothy.