NHS Winter Crisis

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Let me make a little progress, if I may. I will try to take as many interventions as possible, but this is only a half-day debate and I know that many people want to speak.

We have heard the stories of ambulances backed up outside hospitals. Ambulances have been diverted from gridlocked A&E departments 150 times. Our hospitals are overcrowded and our bed occupancy levels are running at unsafe levels. In the run-up to Christmas eve, over one third of England’s children’s care units were 100% full, with not a single spare bed. We have had reports of whole children’s wards being used for adults. In fact, we do not know the full scale of the crisis because this year NHS England is not reporting which hospital trusts have issued the OPEL—operational pressures escalation levels—alerts revealing hospital pressures. I hope that, given the Secretary of State’s keenness on a duty of candour, he will explain why the OPEL data is not being collected and published nationally for England, as it has been in recent years.

But of course behind every single one of these statistics is a real human story. We have heard stories of elderly, fragile patients treated in the backs of ambulances in the freezing January weather, or elderly patients, sometimes confused, languishing on trolleys in corridors, such as the 80-year-old epileptic man with severe dementia who was stuck on a trolley for 36 hours waiting to be treated at the Royal Stoke. His daughter, Jackie Weaver, said:

“it was absolutely horrendous. You couldn’t get past for all the trolleys”.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Given that this is about Stoke, I will give way.

[Ruth Smeeth]

We had 67 people sitting on trolleys. We ran out of corridor space. Two hundred people medically fit for discharge had nowhere to go. The pressure on my constituents and those of my hon. Friends in north Staffordshire was appalling, but so was the pressure on the staff who had to cope with looking after those patients. My constituents deserve better and the staff deserve better. We need money for social care—and we needed it last year.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes a moving contribution to the debate. Those people in Stoke whose relatives have been waiting so long on corridors will see the Prime Minister saying, “Nothing is perfect,” but the truth is that we do not want perfection—we just want a bit of dignity and humanity in our health service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Absolutely. Bed occupancy rates at such a level are unsafe. I know the Secretary of State is committed to patient safety—he has made it one of his signature issues—yet he is presiding over a health service in which bed occupancy in acute hospitals is routinely well over 85%.

We have heard about the pressures in South Yorkshire, but what about the pressures in West Yorkshire? Of the hospital ward in Pinderfields where people were left lying on the floor, a witness said:

“The man who was lying on the floor at the bottom of my husband’s bed was being sick. He was asking for a trolley to lie on but there wasn’t one to give him.”

Of course, their plight was dismissed in the House on Monday by the then Minister, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who told us there were enough chairs to sit on.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way to the local MP, and I will then try to make some progress.