NHS Corridor Care

Debate between Paul Waugh and Rosena Allin-Khan

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered NHS corridor care.

I express my sincere thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time to the important subject of corridor care, and I declare my interest as a proud serving NHS emergency doctor working in A&E at St George’s hospital in my Tooting constituency. In my 21 years as a doctor—I know; I can hear the audible gasp because I do not look old enough—I have never felt more proud to serve with a group of individuals such as those at St George’s hospital. The leadership team, to which we welcome a new CEO in Mat Shaw, and the team of nurses, doctors, reception staff, porters and healthcare assistants in my emergency department, make me proud to go and do every single shift that I do there, and it feels like a pleasure, not a chore.

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her fantastic work in the NHS as a doctor; it is much appreciated. Like many NHS workers, she struggles against the odds and sees on a daily basis the impact of corridor care. Does she agree that NHS staff feel frustration with corridor care as much as patients do, and that they want to act and see it end as much as anyone else? Crucially, the key is more staff. Is that not, ultimately, what we all want?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

My hon. Friend and I are not performing a double act today, but he leads me on perfectly to the next part of my speech, as I go on to say that “corridor care” is something of a misnomer. Treatment in a corridor, far away from oxygen, proper equipment and emergency cords to pull, without privacy or dignity, without access to decent and appropriate toilet facilities, and without the highest standard of infection prevention and control, cannot be classified as care in any realistic sense. It is important to say that the staff go above and beyond with what they have. It is not the case that patients are suffering in pain because the staff do not care or do not provide a first-class service; it is because, quite simply, a corridor or any other space not built to serve and care for patients in is not the right place for a patient to be.

It is not just corridors, because patients across the NHS have been seen in antenatal rooms, store cupboards, waiting rooms and even car parks, filling every conceivable inch of a hospital. Members can imagine that people are coming in feeling particularly vulnerable, and they are happy to get the care wherever they can get it. I have never heard of any of my colleagues across the country say that they have had a patient who refused to be seen in a cupboard; they are just grateful to be seen. Even the official definition of so-called corridor care is problematic. NHS data relies on local clinical judgment about whether an environment is safe and whether patients’ privacy and dignity are being maintained. Trusts are applying these standards differently, and some feel the need, sadly, to game the system to artificially lower their corridor care statistics.