Summer Health and Resilience

Jen Craft Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his response. As I did not reply to him yesterday, I did not have the opportunity to welcome him to his post. He referred to my personal links to East Hampshire. I should say that I remember going to see the GP at the health centre on Anstey Road in Alton, because of an earache—not that I am associating the right hon. Gentleman with earache.

The shadow Secretary of State raised the issue of this summer. Despite the record demand on the health service in July, there were actually improvements in performance on waiting lists, waiting times and emergency care as a result of the huge amount of planning and work that had been done on performance, particularly for A&E, emergency care and electives. That is a tribute to the work across the national health service and all the planning work that had been done nationally, including to improve performance.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of preparedness for the coming winter. Health Ministers have meetings about the winter in the summer and we are now increasingly going to have to have meetings about summer in the winter as well, but that planning is already well under way right across the NHS and across NHS England. We will provide updates for the House in due course.

The right hon. Gentleman raised some particular issues to do with heat. The NHS approach should be about seasonal resilience to be ready for what might be extremes of flooding, extremes of hot weather and different kinds of conditions that will impact on the country, so that it is able to respond to changing patterns of health need. That is why things such as capital investment are so important in building that greater resilience, which we do not have at the moment because of what we inherited. It is also why we now have a specific heat taskforce to look through the journey on both prevention and how we modernise, and to ensure that the right response is in place right across the NHS.

I am happy to discuss those details further with the shadow Secretary of State as that work progresses. I hope that he will recognise the investment that has gone in over the last two years, in contrast to what we inherited, and the improvements and reforms that are taking place as a result of the changes we have made. I look forward to discussing those with him further.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I very much welcome this statement on our preparedness for future extreme heat events. As the Secretary of State mentioned, there were record A&E attendances this summer, and in my constituency, as in many others, this led to ambulances having to queue outside for upwards of eight hours. I have called on my local hospital’s trust—Mid and South Essex NHS foundation trust—to make a room available for paramedics and ambulance crews to rest and recuperate when this happens, because otherwise they have to sit in their ambulance, often with a very sick person, for upwards of eight hours, with nowhere to go for even a cup of tea and a sandwich. I have been unsuccessful thus far, so will she back my call for hospital trusts, and particularly Mid and South Essex, to make a space available so that ambulance crews can take a break when they have to sit outside A&E for prolonged periods of time?

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for recognising the crucial role that ambulance staff and paramedics play in our emergency care, and the importance of the NHS supporting its staff—our NHS is the staff; it is the people who make up the service. I do not know the details of the individual case she raises, but I will ensure that it is passed on to NHS England. I certainly agree that we need to ensure that staff have the support they need.