Health Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th July 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

I agree with the broad thrust of the points made by the hon. Member for North Shropshire in highlighting the impact of corridor care on patients, on families and on those seeking to provide the care for those patients. I suspect that pretty much all of us, in our own lives or as constituency MPs, will have come across examples of that and the impact that it has on our constituents, or on our friends and family members, so it is a very important point.

Before I turn to new clauses 12 and 56, I will briefly address new clause 84, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham. It is a very moderate and reasonable proposal, in that it seeks simply for data to be made available and published on where 12-hour-plus waits in A&E have contributed to avoidable deaths. That should not be a challenge; I suspect that that data is already extant in some part of the system. She is proposing a very moderate measure, which would pull all that together in one place, and allow it to be focused on and looked at in the round, rather than in disparate little penny packets of data. That is a very reasonable proposition.

The only challenge that I see is, sadly, in proposing it for integrated care board areas. Were the ICBs still what the Conservatives had conceived them to be—a number of geographical areas mapping on to an upper-tier authority social care provider—that data would have been even more meaningful, because it would have been more granular. The risk with the mergers and acquisitions—for want of a better phrase—among ICBs to form ever-larger areas is that that granularity is increasingly diluted. I fear that the genuinely positive benefits of what my hon. Friend is proposing might be somewhat diluted by virtue of what the Government are doing.

[Dr Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

On the publication of data on avoidable deaths, new clause 84 states

“where waits of more than 12 hours in accident and emergency departments was a contributory factor.”

Does the right hon. Member consider it likely that there is any great accuracy in the assessment of whether a death was avoidable?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and I suspect that he has seen this issue in his professional career. Often, when a death occurs in a clinical setting, multiple factors are contributory. I think that that is why my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham framed this as she has, as “a contributory factor”—not the sole factor or the individual most significant factor, but that it could reasonably be deemed by a clinician or by those collecting the data that the long wait contributed to the death, because had that patient been seen, for example, in two hours rather than 12 hours, better clinical outcomes might have been achievable.

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, however, that with many of these things—both clinicians and coroners grapple with this—it is often complex to determine the actual most significant contributory factor. My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham may correct me, but I think that is why she framed new clause 84 as she did, to allow for that degree of a lack of total certainty in such contexts. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point.

I can see what the hon. Member for North Shropshire is seeking to do in new clauses 12 and 56: not unreasonably, she seeks to cast light on the impact of corridor care on patients, families and those caring for people. My only challenge would be—I will enlarge on this in a little more detail—that a narrow focus on corridor care, while understandable, slightly loses the bigger picture. Corridor care is, for want of a better way of putting it, a subset, a consequence, of a much broader systemic challenge.

The Minister will probably know this as well; when I was first appointed to her job, one of the first conversations I had in the context of secondary care was about the importance of flow through our acute hospital systems, from a patient either presenting at A&E or arriving by blue light at A&E, to being treated, and the ability of A&E to function through those patients being seen, treated, and discharged or put into a hospital bed to become an in-patient. The ability to achieve the latter is dependent on the ability to discharge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gregory Stafford]

I rise to support a lot of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston said. Across the Committee, I think we all agree that corridor care and care in other inappropriate settings should have no place in the NHS. No patient should be assessed, treated or left waiting in a corridor, in a cupboard or anywhere else because there is nowhere for them to go.

We owe it to patients and our constituents to be honest about the scale of the problem and be serious about ending it. That starts with measuring it properly, because if we do not collect the data, publish the evidence and track progress, inappropriate care settings risk becoming normalised. In May, nearly 3,000 patients were in corridor care, which was a 2.5% increase from the same time last year. In the same month, 50,000 patients waited in A&E for more than 12 hours, which was a 17% increase from the same period last year.

The Government continually miss their target on the 12-hour wait. I am not making a political point; this is a serious problem, and successive Governments are still struggling to ensure that it does not happen. We all know from our casework and our inboxes, and some of us know through personal experience or from loved ones, that too many patients are experiencing unacceptably long waits in A&E after a decision has been taken to admit them. That is bad for patients, bad for staff and bad for the wider functioning of our hospitals.

New clause 56 in the name of the hon. Member for North Shropshire acknowledges that the causes of delays extend far beyond the emergency department itself, and I will touch on that in a moment. Challenges in social care, discharge processes, step-down provision and workforce capacity all contribute to bottlenecks that leave patients waiting longer than they should. Although there might be legitimate questions about the precise mechanisms proposed in the new clause, I do not think there is any disagreement among the Committee about the principle that patients deserve timely access to a hospital bed and that excessive admission delays should not be accepted as the norm.

That is why I fully support new clause 84 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham. Publishing data on avoidable deaths associated with waits of more than 12 hours would help to ensure that we, as a Parliament and as policymakers, remain focused on outcomes for patients, not just performance indicators. I am particularly persuaded by the proposal to publish that information at ICB level, notwithstanding the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston, which I agree with entirely. It would at least give some allowance for those making decisions to look at the local variation and ensure that it is identified, however less local that will become.

Hopefully, good practice will be able to be shared between different areas, and the areas that face the greatest challenges will be able to receive both appropriate scrutiny and appropriate support. Of course, collecting and publishing data will not by itself reduce waiting times, but we cannot effectively tackle a problem that we do not properly measure. Sunlight is often the best disinfectant in these cases, and greater transparency can be a powerful driver of improvement.

At the heart, new clause 84 recognises the simple truth that every statistic represents a person, a family and a life, and if avoidable deaths are occurring as a consequence of prolonged A&E waits, we should have the courage to measure them, publish them and learn from them. That is why I support the new clause. As has been touched on in other speeches, and as I mentioned earlier, the issue of corridor care does not sit in isolation. In fact, it is not a cause of the problem; it is the symptom of many other problems within our health and social care network.

[Dr Prinsley]

When I was a young doctor—a registrar—in the 1980s, we had 300,000 beds in our health service. By the time I was a senior doctor in the 2020s, we had 140,00 beds—less than half the number of beds we had before. When I was a young doctor, corridor care did not exist; I had never heard the term. The hospitals were simply big enough. Does the hon. Member agree that the many years of decline in the total number of beds in our hospitals is an extremely important factor in the fact that we do not have enough beds for the patients sitting in the A&E departments?

[Gregory Stafford]

I respect immensely the hon. Gentleman’s experience. He described being a young doctor, but he is still a very young doctor/politician now. Of course, capacity is an essential part of this. He is a clinician, so I will not lecture him on this, but my suggestion would be that it is not about just capacity within hospitals. The Government’s shift is to try to get people out of hospitals and into community settings as much as possible, so it is capacity within the whole system that needs to be looked at. Going back and putting loads more beds into hospitals would not somehow solve this problem or create a healthcare system that is aligned with what the Government want, which is hopefully treating more people at home. On his general point, I accept that the more capacity there in the system as a whole, the more likely we are to solve some of the problem.

That neatly moves me on to my next point, which is about the whole-system approach to this. As hon. Members have mentioned, we have a potential problem with ambulances waiting in carparks, and unfortunately, trusts gamify the system when targets are put in place—they do not admit people through the door because it will hit their targets. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston mentioned, that has a knock-on effect for the people sitting in the ambulances and those who are potentially not receiving an ambulance because the capacity is not there. Likewise, at the other end of the system—though I suppose it is both ends of the system—social care needs to improve significantly. I am deeply disappointed that the Government have pushed another social care review that is probably not going to report until 2028, which is kicking the can down the road. I think it is essential that we get social care correct.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

New clauses 12, 56 and 84 are about care in our accident and emergency departments and care in corridors. I do not want to rerun the debate on corridor care that we had in the Chamber last night, but corridor care does not provide safety, privacy and dignity, and it is unpleasant for the patient, their family and staff. If someone is in a corridor, how can they get changed, or use a commode or a bed pan? How can they be examined privately, and give information about their medical history without being overheard by a person walking down the corridor or the person in the bed next to them? Corridor care also has safety issues; for example, a patient may not be proximal to as much equipment, such as oxygen supplies and other equipment that might be required in the event of a collapse or arrest. It is not right and should not be the case that patients are cared for in corridors.

The hon. Member for Blaydon and Consett talked about the history, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East that the current situation and the future are what is important. A&E services are under pressure. Attendances went up by 2.5% last year, but in March 2025, 46,766 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E following a decision to admit before being moved to a more appropriate bed. That figure is up 8.8% on the previous year. The Government’s urgent and emergency care plan sought to improve that poor performance, but things have got worse. The latest NHS figures, from May 2026, show that more than 50,000 patients waited more than 12 hours following a decision to admit—17.1% higher than the May 2025 figure. The narrative that there was a problem but now things are getting better is not necessarily accurate. We keep being told that waiting lists are coming down, but they are higher than they were a month ago, and for those waiting for an admission or procedure, they are than they were a month ago and higher than they were a year ago.

[Dr Prinsley]

I wonder whether the hon. Member remembers that in 2010, when I believe there was an election—[Interruption.] Yes. The point I wish to make is that at the end of the previous Conservative Government, before Labour came back into office, waiting lists had reached an absolute record. Under the previous Labour Administration, waiting lists came down to almost nothing, but after 2010 they crept up and up, and by the time of the election in 2024 they had reached a record. I think she will recognise that Labour Governments have had strong records of reducing waiting lists, which is what we are doing now. We are only getting started, but it would be good to have some words of encouragement.

[Dr Johnson]

I am always happy to encourage the hon. Gentleman; I hope that in the impending reshuffle, he is given the opportunity to put his experience into practice. I have one word for him: pandemic. The pandemic made a huge difference to the numbers on waiting lists, and there is no current pandemic. It is possible to make arguments about whether the Government at the time—I was not in the Government at the time—were too harsh in their policies around elective care, whether patients would have come into hospitals for elective operations during covid or whether they would have preferred not to, and whether the waiting lists grew more than they may have done in other circumstances, but to try to say that the pandemic had no effect is going a stretch too far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

Does my hon. Friend recognise the statistic that between 1997 and 2007, the then Government closed 32,000 hospital beds—more than double the number closed between 2010 and 2022? That is when the big reductions took place, and they failed to put in place an expansion of community beds to match that.

[Dr Prinsley]

rose—

[Dr Johnson]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman in a minute, but I need to answer my right hon. Friend’s question first. My right hon. Friend has a much better memory than me—I was much younger then—so I am sure his statistics will be accurate.

[Dr Prinsley]

I think the principal reduction that the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston described was a result of the change of practice in the way that psychiatry was managed. During that period, we closed the asylums—large hospitals on the outskirts of almost every town and city. That was the result of a change in clinical practice—the idea that patients should be managed within the community. However, we continued to close acute beds, and it is the acute beds in the district general hospitals that are the problem we are talking about.

[Dr Johnson]

I think we are going back full circle to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon, when he suggested that the problem was that beds had historically been closed. Now he is making the point that there were clinical reasons why that happened, not just managerial reasons. I think that is an important thing to note.

Moving on from capacity, we also need to look at the workforce. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us how soon “imminent” is in terms of the workforce plan. There was also a point picked up earlier—I cannot remember who picked it up; it might have been the hon. Member for North Shropshire—about discharge from hospital and pharmacies. One of the challenges that I find as a clinician is that hospital pharmacies often close relatively early, which means that it is more difficult to discharge patients in the evening. That is something for the Minister to look at. There is also, of course, the importance of social care, and ensuring the provision of social care beds both to prevent admission and to get people out of hospital as quickly as is safely possible.

That is the background to this group of new clauses. New clause 12, in the name of the hon. Member for North Shropshire, would require a report on corridor care to be produced six months after the passage of the Act, and then every 12 months, containing data at the hospital, trust and ICB level on the number of individuals receiving care in an inappropriate place. That seems sensible data to collect, but I believe the Government may already to be collecting it; the Minister may be able to enlighten us on that. The report would also set out the steps taken in that year to reduce the number of patients in inappropriate care spaces, the plans for the coming year to reduce that number further—as I said, it is going up at the moment—and the funding allocated to that. There is some sense to that. Then the Secretary of State would have to give evidence in front of a panel, called the “corridor care tribunal”, which would include patients, affected families and impacted NHS staff, who would be selected by Healthwatch and NHS royal colleges.

I have just a couple of points on that. One is that Healthwatch will be abolished by the Bill, which would make that challenging—perhaps the new clause would need to be redrafted. Also, I am a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and an NHS consultant paediatrician and, as far as I am aware, the royal colleges are independent of the national health service. They are separate; they are connected in terms of training, standards and advice, but I believe that they are organisationally independent. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I have got that wrong.

I wonder whether the hon. Member for North Shropshire has considered whether the Health and Social Care Committee, which is elected and politically balanced, might be the right body to scrutinise those Government plans. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East, who is a member of the Select Committee, is not here now, but—