Mental Health and NHS Performance

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

As we discussed earlier when my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) spoke, there are places where the service that the ambulance service provides to rural areas is not as good as it should be, sometimes because of the perverse incentives relating to how the targets work. I have been nervous about changing the targets, because that can sometimes be taken as a signal to relax and I am absolutely determined that we should meet the current targets, but I did make a commitment to him that I would look into this issue and I will do so.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Last year, just 67% of category red 1 ambulance calls in Sheffield were answered within eight minutes. Last week, I met a constituent whose husband died while he waited for an ambulance for two hours and 40 minutes. Can the Secretary of State continue to stand at that Dispatch Box and say that there is no link between the underfunding of our NHS and these irresponsible and completely unacceptable response times?

[Mr Hunt]

First, of course what happened in that situation is totally unacceptable, but the hon. Lady makes a mistake to continually bring this back to funding, as it is also about demand pressures and models of care. Let me reassure her about the extra funding that has gone into ambulance services. We have about 200 more ambulances and about 2,000 more paramedics, and every day the ambulance service is doing about 3,400 more blue-light calls than it was six years ago. Significant investment has been made, but clearly more needs to happen.