WARRINGTON South MP Faisal Rashid is calling on the Health Secretary to take urgent action to tackle the year-round NHS crisis with tens of thousands of patients kept waiting in A&E and on hospital trolleys.
Across the country, December’s A&E performance was the worst on record. In England over 300,000 patients waited longer than four hours in A&E, almost 70,000 had to wait longer than four hours on a trolley for a hospital bed.
Analysis from Labour of the latest NHS England winter data has revealed that across the country over 100,000 patients have been stuck in the back of ambulances this winter. And almost 25,000 patients have been forced to wait longer than one hour.
In Warrington, immense winter pressures on frontline NHS services in December meant that ambulances were left waiting outside Warrington Hospital’s A&E department.
Faisal said: “These statistics are deeply concerning. The Conservative Government is letting patients down in Warrington South and presiding over an NHS in crisis. The Government’s failure to act on these issues is putting our brilliant NHS staff under increasing pressure and letting down patients.
“NHS staff are working tirelessly to provide the best possible care and support to patients but they are forced to do so in the face of increasing pressure and a sustained period of Government underfunding of the NHS.
“As my colleague, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary rightly made clear, “This is not just a winter crisis. This is an all year round funding crisis, a year round staffing crisis, a year round social care crisis, a year round health inequality crisis – manufactured in Downing Street by this Government.””
“My Labour colleagues and I are fighting in Westminster to protect our NHS services and we are echoing calls from NHS providers who have warned that the Government’s funding settlement for the NHS is simply inadequate to provide the standards of patient care expected. And we will continue to speak out on this issue because we believe there is another way.
“A Labour Government would give the NHS the funding it urgently needs. We would cut waiting lists by guaranteeing treatment within 18 weeks, put safe staffing levels into law and ease the pressure on the NHS by properly funding social care. A Labour Government would stand up for our NHS.”
