Ambulance Resources and Response Times

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Wright]

I must praise my hon. Friend, because he does fantastic work on health issues through his passionate commitment to the NHS and in his work on the Select Committee on Health. He is absolutely right, and I will come on to the finances and resources for ambulance services in a moment.

Mr Gouldburn’s case was tragic, and from what the coroner said, it was avoidable. However, a further tragedy is that his case is not unique or isolated. I have been told about similar cases, as my hon. Friends have been.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for securing this debate so quickly. I have raised the issue of the NEAS a number of times. I have met the Minister about it; I even recognise some of the civil servants who are here today, having met them before. However, I was talking then about cases in the dales, where we accept that there will be an issue about logistics. Recently, cases have been raised with me every week. The latest one involved an elderly lady who fell outside and broke her hip. When her son rang to find out where the ambulance was, he was told that she was 42nd in the queue. She was lying outside with a broken hip for three hours, and that happened in Consett, where there is an ambulance service in the town. The whole situation is spiralling out of control, and I would welcome my hon. Friend’s views on it.

[Mr Wright]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the situation is spiralling out of control. The case that she has just told the House about is simply unacceptable and downright distressing, but it is not unique.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) on securing the debate. Given the wide range of topics that he and his colleagues raised, I am not sure whether I will be able to cover them all in the time available, so if I do not, I will attempt to respond to any substantive points after the debate. I will also certainly alert my noble Friend Earl Howe to the points made.

As the hon. Gentleman said, ambulance services are vital to the health care system and provide rapid assistance to people in urgent need of help. Many lives are saved by the hard work of ambulance service personnel. He is right to place his congratulations on the record and I want to place on the record my appreciation of the work done by staff in ambulance trusts. I gently suggest that I do not recognise some of the words and phrases used in the debate to characterise the service provided, but I am sure that they were used to stress a point.

[Pat Glass]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jane Ellison]

No, because I have only just begun and the hon. Gentleman took many interventions.

Emergency services are the first port of call for many of us when serious illness or accident strikes. The total number of emergency calls to ambulance services in England in 2013-14 was 8.4 million, which is a 0.9% drop over the previous year. Unfortunately, a small proportion are unnecessary or frivolous, but the overwhelming majority are from people who feel in need of urgent help.

The growing number of people living with chronic conditions and the ageing population to which the hon. Gentleman referred are placing increasing pressure on urgent care services, something that we all acknowledge. It is important for my Department to work with Public Health England, local commissioners and health care providers to educate and engage the public on measures to prevent chronic health problems from developing. There are a number of people who end up in A and E because they have not taken medication properly or who suffer acute problems as a result of a chronic condition. Hon. Members will be aware of some of the longer-term problems in their region, which result from difficult public health challenges. Tackling those is my own particular portfolio, and is one way in which we can make the emergency services more sustainable in the longer term.

I hope hon. Members recognise that. At times, it seemed that they were merely committing themselves to significant additional future spending rather than also turning their minds to the longer-term challenges.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison]

I am not familiar with the cases that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but I will draw them to the attention of my ministerial colleagues and of the trust. I spoke to the head of the trust yesterday, and will make sure that the debate is brought to the trust’s attention. However, I gently say to hon. Members that they surely cannot be suggesting that at no previous time, under any previous Government, have there been any cases in which a service did not get this right. It is important to—

[Pat Glass]

It’s a service in crisis!

[Jane Ellison]

I do not recognise that description, and I do not think the service would recognise it.

Very rarely, as we have heard, waits may be unacceptably long, but it is important to remember that the vast majority of people receive a timely response when they dial 999. I am aware of the case of William Gouldburn, who was the constituent of the hon. Member for Hartlepool and who sadly died in April last year as the result of an existing heart condition. He waited two hours for an ambulance after his collapse at home. His case is distressing, and his MP is right to champion it and make us aware of it. The trust acknowledges that it failed by not getting an ambulance to Mr Gouldburn within the one-hour target it had set itself. It has been accepted that that was not good enough.

Difficult as his story is to hear, it is important to note that Mr Gouldburn’s 999 call was categorised as a green call—that is, a non-life-threatening situation—and at the inquest the coroner accepted that the call had been correctly triaged and categorised. That is not to say that there were not things that clearly should have been done differently, but it is right to put on the record what the coroner said. There is no denying that Mr Gouldburn waited an unacceptably long time for an ambulance, but the decision on his call’s priority was made when other calls were at the same time being prioritised as red.

It is a matter for local commissioners to agree with ambulance trusts the appropriate protocols for dealing with green calls, based on available clinical guidelines and local circumstances. I know that in the case of the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) those local circumstances have been recognised with the introduction of a specific response vehicle in her constituency. There has been increasing demand on ambulance services—the North East Ambulance Service says that it saw a 5% increase in the volume of emergency incidents in the year up to March 2014—but thanks to the hard work of service staff, fast response times have been delivered in the vast majority of cases.

NEAS advises that over 40% of the calls it receives are categorised as red, so its consistent ability to exceed the national target for response times should be commended. NEAS has also told me that in 2013-14, 74.8% of calls categorised as green 2, or serious but not life-threatening, received a response within 30 minutes.