NHS: Long-term Strategy Debate
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Fleur Anderson
Main Page: Fleur Anderson (Labour - Putney)Department Debates - View all Fleur Anderson's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
NHS: Long-term Strategy
Fleur Anderson Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I am worried and angry about the complacency that I have seen from the Secretary of State towards the NHS. Look, I knew that the situation was bad, but I did not realise how bad until I visited St George’s A&E last week. That hospital, which serves my constituency, had to declare a critical incident because of the situation in its A&E. All the doctors and nurses I spoke to agreed that it was the worst time that they had experienced in their whole careers. The winter ward was opened last year but had to stay open for the whole year, so there is no more space for the extra winter surge. Sixty nurses have resigned from that department because of the stress of the workload and being underpaid.
The additional winter payments that came from the Government were paid only in December and must be spent by March, giving them hardly any real impact. The situation is chaotic. The doctors and nurses are having to practise corridor care for patients for the first time in the hospital, and they are broken-hearted that they have to do so. They have had to stop elective heart surgery since the beginning of December. Mental health patients are being treated in A&E for five days. We need a long-term plan, not to be surprised by winter every year.
Four areas are seen as having critical community care shortages: eating disorders; Korsakoff dementia patients; frail patients who have a stroke after a fall; and functional neurological disorder. Those huge gaps in community care were raised by the staff. I am glad that the Secretary of State is in his place to hear me raise them.
The Conservatives are failing the people of Putney, Southfields and Roehampton. The Conservatives are failing the British people. Labour has a plan to fix this, but they do not. Pain, suffering and preventable deaths are up, GP waiting times are up, A&E waiting times are up, and mental health and cancer assessment times are up. There is only one conclusion: the Conservatives’ time is up.