North East Ambulance Service

Anna Turley Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

I wish to make a brief contribution to the debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on securing a debate on a matter that is of importance throughout the north-east of England. This is an important service, run by good people under extraordinary pressure. To give an example, on Monday 7 December last year, there were 1,837 emergency calls to the service. That is equivalent to new year’s eve and was a 46% increase on the year before. That was accompanied by 1,664 calls taken by the 111 service.

The service is fast becoming a gateway to healthcare as others become more difficult to access and some, such as walk-in centres, are no longer there at all. Repeated requests to the public to call the service only in life-threatening situations can do only so much. I accept that a certain amount of problems are caused by hoax calls and other misuse of the service. People who do such things are completely irresponsible and stand to be condemned, but that is not at the heart of the problems faced by the service in our region.

I would like to touch briefly on a number of issues. The first is commissioning, which is not one of the strongest features of the Government’s national health service reorganisation. How focused are the commissioners on the service they are supposed to be in charge of? Are they working alongside the chief executive in a supportive and encouraging way? When has their role ever been reviewed or carefully considered by those in charge? There is a case for looking at that and at staff morale, as my hon. Friend rightly said, and asking ourselves why it is as it is. Surveys of the service show that 90% of staff are stressed. That is consistent with the picture that came from her address—and no doubt will come from colleagues—of a service that is trying to do its best under enormous pressure.

Like my hon. Friend, I welcome the establishment of the diploma of higher education in paramedic practice, which will start in September at the University of Sunderland. That two-year course has been created to try to meet the shortage of paramedics in the region as well as the national shortage. Evidence suggests that the grading of posts may be too low, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on that. It seems odd that, in a region such as the north-east, where unemployment levels are still higher than the national average, there should be a persistent vacancy rate of between 10% and 15% in the service.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the issues raised with me on recruitment challenges is that it costs £1,200 to get a driving entitlement for C1 vehicles. For many people, that cost is extremely prohibitive and constituents have said to me that that has put them off applying for those kinds of jobs.

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend is on to a good point. There is something odd if, in a region of higher than average unemployment, it is difficult to fill those vacancies not just in a single moment in time but persistently. We should look at all barriers to entry into the service. I accept what she said, but I harbour the thought that gradings may have been set too low and that there is a case for upgrading the job.

I have two other points to mention briefly. Legal highs are again putting more pressure on the service as young people in particular misuse them. I suggest that it is not a good idea to take them at all, but taking them results in the ambulance service being called out. There were something like 20 incidents, including a cardiac arrest, in a single day—8 February—and so far this year there have been about 300 call-outs because of the use of legal highs. I harbour the view that they should not be legal, but perhaps that is a different debate.

Finally, I want to mention the pressures that will be put on the service if the supported accommodation proposals that the Government are considering come to pass. If vulnerable people who are housed in projects and given support to lead their day-to-day lives are denied that support and left to their own devices, the consequence for the police, accident and emergency services at hospitals and ambulance services will be much greater, rather than lesser, pressure. That is not the right direction of travel for our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), not just for securing the debate, but for the passionate and thoughtful speech she gave, which got right to the heart of the issue. She articulated something that has been brewing among my constituents since I was elected last May. It gives me great concern and I want to share some experiences I have had.

Like my colleagues, I have become deeply concerned about the pressures on the North East Ambulance Service and their impact on my constituents. If someone is waiting for an ambulance, they are probably at one of the most distressed and vulnerable times of their life. Every minute waiting for an ambulance feels like an hour. Every moment is precious—vital; and there is a critical impact on people’s distress levels, and, as we have heard, their chances of survival. The Government must look at the situation to make sure that the service improves. I have heard far too many stories from constituents about people waiting several hours for an ambulance to arrive. As others have mentioned, that has affected elderly people particularly, and not just in minor cases—people who are elderly and vulnerable.

I want to mention a recent case, which happened just last month. A 72-year-old woman in Marske in my constituency fell and fractured her hip in the street in the centre of the village. She was left lying in immense pain on the pavement in the freezing cold. It is a seaside town and she was left virtually on the sea front for three hours. Thanks to members of the public and many local business owners who came out of their shops, she was cared for by the community; but we can imagine not just her distress but the distress and horror of the community at seeing such a thing happening in their village—someone at a vulnerable time in her life, waiting in agony for the ambulance that they had paid for with their taxes, and which they expected to come to support a community member. It was completely unacceptable that she had to wait in pain for so long.

Another constituent, an elderly lady of 99 years who was born during the first world war, fell in her home at the end of last year, breaking her arm in three places. She was in so much pain that her family did not want to transport her themselves so they called an ambulance. Again, it arrived three hours later. She was 99 years old. What sort of society are we? If a 99 year-old woman who has had a fall and broken her arm is not an emergency and top of the priority list, I cannot imagine who is. Thankfully, she was at home in the warmth of her house and not outside on a pavement, but who is to say that she would have been any more of a priority if she had been outside on a stone-cold pavement.

As many of my colleagues have said, something is wrong with the prioritisation of people, particularly of elderly people, who have paid, worked and strived for their whole lives. How can we as a society look ourselves in the eye when that is how we treat someone who was born before the NHS started and has contributed to the system?

A local district nurse told me recently of another incident, involving a bed-bound patient with a suspected ruptured bladder. Although a blue light was not needed, the patient required an urgent ambulance. They were given an initial response time of one hour, but the ambulance eventually arrived after five hours. That waiting time was completely unacceptable; and again, there was an issue of the ambulance being diverted.

That is important. If ambulances keep being diverted to more important calls, the original call becomes increasingly more urgent. The knock-on cost of the crisis in the service and the level of support that people need falls on the NHS, but more crucially on those affected, in the increasing danger they are in while waiting longer and in the agony and the tragedy they experience. That is where cuts have a serious impact, because they cost more down the line, as the service becomes increasingly crisis-led and ambulances are diverted to more urgent calls. What was a lesser priority becomes more urgent and more costly to the NHS and the individual’s life.

In highlighting these cases, I am not criticising the work of paramedics and switchboard staff, because they do a fantastic job on the frontline that I do not think I could do. We owe them a massive debt of gratitude. They work under extreme pressure, dealing with people in life-or-death situations, and often in dangerous situations. Many are underpaid or struggling with their terms and conditions. They sometimes have to deal with distressed or angry families, and who can blame those families when they have waited hours and seen their loved ones in agony while failing to get the most basic service they need?

I want to comment on the failure of the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust. According to the ambulance clinical quality indicators, the North East Ambulance Service takes longer than any other region in the country to answer calls. It also has the highest number of abandoned calls in the country. Colleagues have given plenty of examples showing that the service is in crisis and cannot continue as at present. Our elderly and vulnerable constituents are suffering.

Constituents have told me that a crew said that the Teesside service has a lower headcount than it should have and that ambulances have had to come from Durham, which is why we get delays. Parts of the north-east are geographically spread out and rural, and it is just not acceptable that ambulances are having to come from Durham. The morale of our ambulance workers is low. They are overstretched and, despite their heroic efforts, pressure is leading to targets being missed and patients and our constituents suffering.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister what the Government plan to do to tackle the problem and ensure that the investment they have promised for the NHS will go to this vital, front-line service in the north-east to save the lives of our most vulnerable constituents.