NHS Winter Crisis

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Rebecca Pow

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

If I may, I will make a little progress. I have been generous, but I will try to take as many other interventions as possible.

We have heard about Stoke, but what about the story of 87-year-old Yvonne Beer, who suffers from dementia? She was at Worcestershire Royal when, forced to wait 10 hours in hospital to see a doctor, she had to be tied into a wheelchair with a scarf after her bed was taken away. We learn that Southmead Hospital in Bristol has had a capacity of 104%. Yesterday, a leaked memo revealed:

“Acute Medical Unit physicians have been on their knees with workload pressure”,

and that the

“biggest risk remains patients in corridors in the Emergency Department with no allocated doctor, no allocated bed and no treatment—some of these are very sick indeed”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. The memo was emailed to oncology department staff in the last few days. If the trust is now backing down on that, all of us across the House will welcome it, but the point still stands: the trust was looking at delaying chemotherapy by four weeks and it referred to a lack of staff and capacity. As we know, this trust has cut many, many beds in recent years, including cancer beds and renal beds, and we know that it is under huge pressures.

[Rebecca Pow]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will make some progress.

The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) rightly said that we do not want to make this more of a crisis, but the Secretary of State knows that cancelling elective operations as an impact on hospital finances. It means a loss of revenue for trusts that are already struggling to meet their deficit targets. Rather than allowing waiting times—