Ambulance Services and National Heatwave Emergency

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

There are two aspects to that question. In terms of urgency, we have procured a contract with a total value of £30 million for an auxiliary ambulance service, which will provide national surge capacity if needed to support the ambulance response during periods of increased pressure. That capacity is there, should we need it.

The hon. Lady also talked about long-term plans. We have been investing in the ambulance service since 2010. I talked about the extra paramedics: we are training 3,000 graduates every year to 2024 in order to increase our capacity. We have also made significant investments in the workforce, with an almost 40% increase since February 2010, so we are improving. Sometimes, those changes take time to come through, but we are investing in the workforce, providing more funding and training more paramedics, and we also have an auxiliary ambulance service procured should we need it.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

“24 Hours in A&E” used to be a reality TV programme; now, it is Government policy. Can the Minister tell me why this Government have presided over a watering down of standards that will see the zero tolerance for 12-hour waits in A&E and the 30-minute standard for ambulance handover delays scrapped?

[Maria Caulfield]

The reason I am standing at this Dispatch Box is my experience of working as a nurse in A&E under the last Labour Government. I believe it was them who introduced the four-hour target. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Lady want to listen to my response? Those targets looked good on paper, but were very often just driven as tick-box exercises.

I used to look after patients. I remember an elderly gentleman who was waiting for over four hours on a hospital corridor when I was a nurse under the last Labour Government. He was lying there on his trolley, wanting to go to the toilet, and all we could do was wheel a curtain around him on a busy hospital corridor so that he could do so. That was the experience under the last Labour Government, so I will not take any lectures from Opposition Members about performance.