Public Health

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper]

Something appears to have been lost in translation here. I am not entirely sure whether the right hon. Member is referring to students or to the academics who teach them. I am talking about encouraging people to work from home where they can. There are of course examples where people will need to go into work, and they can change the ways in which they work, but working from home has been proven to reduce levels of transmission.

I am concerned that we are talking solely about the new variant, and that the mantra around putting in place restrictions to protect the NHS appears to have stopped. I worry that the Government appear to have lost their tongue. Ambulance services across the whole of England are at their highest alert level: level 4, or code black. That means that there are people in the back of ambulances who cannot get into hospitals. The NHS 111 line has had more than 1 million calls abandoned after 30 seconds this year, when they should be answered within 20 seconds. We have GPs who are reducing their hours or resigning because of the workload and the abuse. Some of them are really worried and saying that they will not to take on the contracts to deliver the booster jabs because of the expectation that they will still have to do the same amount of work seeing their patients and that if they are required to do the booster jabs as well, that will mean longer waits for other appointments. They are not getting the support they need in that regard, and I hope that the Minister will respond to this point. We have record backlogs—

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I very much agree with the hon. Lady’s comments, and I wish that she had amplified them more in regard to the ambulance service. I represent a large rural constituency, as many colleagues do, and if people are waiting for ambulances because people are queueing at the acute sector because others cannot be discharged, that is going to lead to huge problems during the winter months. Does she agree that that is something we should all keep at the forefront of our minds?

[Daisy Cooper]

I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I have tried to raise that issue as often as I can through various means, and that is probably all I can say on the matter. Back in October, I tabled a written question to the Government to ask how many ambulance services were at level 4, and it took a couple of attempts at chasing that up before I got a response. I believe that hon. Members would benefit from having time to debate the issue in this House. In my own constituency of St Albans, there have been some incredibly tragic cases. A woman lost her baby because she was stuck in the back of an ambulance for many hours without being able to get into the local hospital. Another constituent lost their partner because they were stuck in the back of an ambulance for 12 hours and then died a week later because they had not been able to get that emergency treatment—