Streeting: ‘I can’t promise there won’t be patients treated in corridors next year’

The Health Secretary has said he can’t “promise that there won’t be patients treated in corridors next year”.

Wes Streeting said the Government would “never accept or tolerate” people being treated in “unsafe, undignified” conditions but that it would “take time to undo the damage” done to the NHS.

Pressures during the most recent cold snap caused several NHS trusts to declare critical incidents because of sustained pressure in A&E departments.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has said many of the 54,207 patients waiting longer than 12 hours following a decision to admit in December – the third highest recorded number of patients with waits of this kind – will have received care in temporary environments, such as corridors or chairs.

In a statement to the Commons, Mr Streeting said “corridor care” had become “normalised in NHS hospitals under the previous government”.

He told MPs: “I want to be clear, I will never accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors. It is unsafe, undignified, a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS and I am determined to consign it to the history books.

“I cannot and will not promise that there won’t be patients treated in corridors next year. It will take time to undo the damage that has been done to our NHS, but that is the ambition this Government has.”

Mr Streeting told the House that the experience of patients this winter has been “unacceptable” and the NHS is facing a “toxic cocktail of pressures”.

He said: “I visited one A&E department over Christmas, where I was told on the way in that I was lucky as I had come on a quiet day, yet as I walked through the hospital, I saw patients on trolleys lining the corridors where they were being treated without the dignity or safety they should expect as a minimum.

“I saw frail elderly people on beds in the emergency department, many with dementia, crying out in pain and confusion because ultimately, they were in the wrong place for their care needs. This was supposedly a good day.”

Over the course of last week, hospitals in Northamptonshire, Cornwall, Liverpool, Hampshire, Birmingham, Plymouth and the Wirral declared critical incidents.

Critical incidents allow a hospital to prioritise staff, money and attention towards the emergency department putting off other services like elective surgeries and appointments.

Mr Streeting said the NHS is now using critical incidents “proactively to focus minds” and “get the system responding to de-escalate and steer them back to safer waters”.

He said: “I am happy to report there is currently one live critical incident down from 24 last week, but I do not pretend that this is good enough.

“It will take time to get back to the standards that patients deserve, but it can be done. It will require a big shift in the focus of healthcare, out of the hospital and into the community, to free up beds for emergency patients and to prevent people having to call an ambulance or go to A&E in the first place.”

Mr Streeting said the Government will “recruit a thousand more GPs by April”, have announced “a package of reforms to bust bureaucracy”, and have made up to “£3.7 billion pounds of extra funding available for local authorities who provide social care”.

Shadow health secretary Edward Argar accused Mr Streeting of failing to put in the work to prepare the NHS for winter, while the Health Secretary hit back by calling Mr Argar an “arsonist criticising the fire brigade for not doing enough”.

Mr Argar said: “Before Christmas, I and the Conservatives called for a winter-specific bed-increase plan, we still haven’t had one, will he set out what he is doing to increase the number of beds and capacity now?

“While the Secretary of State talks the talk, he hasn’t done the work ahead of this winter. Will he now reassure patients and staff he will urgently boost capacity, resources and support to ensure our constituents get the care they need when they need it?”

The Health Secretary replied: “It’s all very well criticising from the opposition benches, but he once again resembles the same pattern of behaviour as his predecessor of acting like the arsonist criticising the fire brigade for not doing enough, quickly enough, to put out the fire that they started. It is truly shameful.”