Ambulance and Emergency Department Waiting Times

Kate Osborne Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing the debate.

In the north-east, as across the UK, our healthcare system is in crisis. We have an NHS staffing crisis and a lack of GPs, millions waiting for routine operations, a loss of hospital beds, and direct cuts to mental health services funding. The Health and Care Act 2022, which came into force this month, fails to address the serious challenges facing the NHS and public health and social care, and will likely make all the problems worse as local boards will make decisions based on financial constraints, rather than patient health.

The North East Ambulance Service claims to be one of the best performing in the UK on ambulance waiting times, but that ignores the unacceptable waiting times that individuals face even in the most serious cases. Ten per cent. of people who had emergencies such as strokes or serious chest pain were left waiting for 40 minutes—more than double the target wait time—and some waited for more than 90 minutes. Shockingly, 10% of individuals with urgent conditions who needed treatment and transfer to hospital waited more than three hours, and some waited as long as five hours.

Disgracefully, just a few weeks ago, reports emerged of a cover-up in the North East Ambulance Service regarding patient safety and possible deaths. There were allegations that the service withheld details from coroners in more than 90 cases between 2018 and 2019. My constituency of Jarrow is covered by the North East Ambulance Service, and such reports are obviously very concerning.

NHS England is now investigating the tragic failings of NEAS, but it is clear for everyone to see that our NHS is at crisis point. That is not the fault of individual staff members who do their best to cope with an under-resourced and understaffed NHS; nor is it just the impact of the pandemic. For too long our NHS has been pushed to the brink by the Tories. We entered the pandemic with the longest financial squeeze in NHS history, with thousands waiting longer for cancer treatment and the A&E target not met for six years. A&E waiting times are at an all-time high with 30% of people waiting more than four hours in A&E. Those waiting times have become progressively worse over the last decade.

The South Tyneside and Sunderland trust in my constituency has 39% of people waiting longer than four hours to be seen. Our emergency services are there for us in times of crisis, making life and death decisions in an instant and providing care and comfort to us at our moment of need. They need our support and they need the Government to start investing directly in our NHS. I want to put on the record my thanks for the great work that the Save South Tyneside Hospital campaign is doing in its campaign for the future of South Tyneside Hospital and its acute and emergency services.

Instead of investing in our NHS and staff, the Government insist that staff take a real-terms pay cut and attack staff sick pay, at the same time privatising as much as they can get their grubby little hands on. Our NHS cannot sustain the current level of attacks from this Government. Inevitably, both staff and patients will suffer. It is a disgrace that the Government are attacking the workers who have kept us going through covid—the workers who put themselves at risk every day and who go to work to protect us, who are called heroes one minute and vilified the next.

More and more is being outsourced to private companies using a false narrative of bringing down waiting times. The more the private sector becomes involved, the worse the situation becomes as capacity in the NHS is reduced and private companies cherry-pick easy and lucrative cases. All of that has the devastating consequence of forcing more and more people in pain and desperation to take out loans and crowdfund on the internet to pay for an operation because the wait is too much for them to bear. A two-tier health system is being privatised by the back door.

It was the NHS’s 74th birthday yesterday. Nye Bevan said:

“Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.”

If we want to make sure that future generations do not have to pay when they are ill, we must urgently ensure that our NHS is funded, and that all the parts that have been privatised are brought back in-house.