Defending Public Services — House of Commons, 2016-05-23
Topic: Health
Heidi Alexander (Labour, Centre-left): From memory, I seem to think the budget going to the NHS in Wales has been cut in Westminster Let us have a look at the figures. In March 2011—[Interruption.] The Health Secretary would do well to listen to these figures, because I am about to tell him the record of his term in office. In March 2011, 8,602 patients waited more than four hours on trolleys because no beds were available. Four years later, the figure was up sixfold, to 53,641. In March 2011, just one patient had to wait longer than 12 hours on a trolley. Four years later, 350 patients suffered that experience. The NHS waiting list now stands at almost 3.7 million people—the equivalent of one in every 15 people in England. Only 67% of ambulance call-outs to the most serious life-threatening cases are being responded to within eight minutes. I could reel off more statistics, but I will instead read a letter that I received the other week: "Dear Ms Alexander, I recently had the misfortune of using the A&E at my local hospital in Margate. My wife feels that I was lucky to escape with my life My experience has convinced me that our health service has never been more under threat than since Mrs Thatcher The fact that I was sent home after 4 hours without seeing a doctor and returned by emergency ambulance with a now perforated appendix I blame mostly on the conflict between the Health Secretary and the Junior Doctors. Had this been resolved he would have been able to concentrate on the woeful lack of resources our NHS faces." Take the experience—[Interruption.] The Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Health Secretary says, "Show us the letter". I have it here, and I got the permission of the individual who wrote to me before referring to it Let me refer to another example—the experience of Mr Steven Blanchard at the Swindon Great Western hospital last November. He said in an open letter to the Swindon Advertiser: "We arrived at 6.40pm and were asked to sit with about 15 others in the unit. It became apparent this was a place of great suffering and misery…Firstly, there was a lady who was doubled up in pain who had been promised painkillers three hours before and I witnessed her mother go again and again to reception until she was begging for pain relief for her near hysterical daughter." Another old lady "who had been left on her own by her son…was sat picking at a cannula in her arm trying to pull it out…A very frail and sick old man was sat in a wheelchair and he had been in the unit since 8am. He kept saying over and over ‘a cup of tea would be nice’…then I watched as urine trailed from him and fell on to the floor beneath the chair…At 10.30pm he was taken to a ward after 14 hours." Mr Blanchard said that he and his partner were finally seen at 1.20 am, and stated: "Never before have I seen people crying out of desperation…I don’t know what is to blame or whether it’s lack of money or lack of staff but this place was what I can only describe as ‘hell on earth’." That is what is happening in our NHS in 2016, and such stories are becoming more common. Ministers may not like to hear it, but they need to start taking responsibility.