A and E and Ambulance Services

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is totally unacceptable for people to create extra pressure on ambulance services when they should not be doing so. One of the encouraging aspects of the better care programme is the fact that we are starting to analyse the ambulance service, the local NHS and the social care system in order to establish where the highest volumes of ambulance calls are coming from and sort out the problem.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Two weeks ago, along with other Members of Parliament, I met executives of the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which, as I am sure the Secretary of State agrees, is an outstanding trust that invariably meets its care and financial targets. However, we were told that even that trust was not meeting its A and E targets. Would the Secretary of State care to reflect on the fact that if a trust as good as the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals trust is experiencing those problems now, there is a real prospect of crisis in the NHS this winter?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree that that is an excellent hospital, and I commend the leadership of Sir Andrew Cash, its chief executive. I have been to the hospital myself; it was absolutely spotless, and I was very impressed by what I saw.

The hon. Gentleman is right. What we cannot do, given the pressures faced by the NHS, is start pointing fingers at individual hospitals, because even well-run hospitals are experiencing a high level of pressure. Hospitals tell us that the solution is often not in their own hands. It is a question of the number of people who turn up at the front door and the number of people whom they are able to discharge at the back, and if neither of those problems is sorted out—which will require proper links with the rest of the local NHS—there will be further problems. The system resilience groups that are now working throughout the country are trying to deal with the issue.