NHS Funding: South-west

Jayne Kirkham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I was not expecting to be called first, but thank you very much, Dr Huq.

Each year, Cornwall, which has a population of 650,000, welcomes around 4 million visitors, drawn by our beautiful beaches and coastline. Tourism is a key part of our economy and provides a livelihood for many, but the downside is the pressure on our public services. Some areas in Cornwall treble in population, and that has a profound impact on our NHS and our only hospital, the Royal Cornwall hospital in my constituency.

In 2021, our hospital was on black alert all summer, and 30% of those attending A&E were not registered with a Cornish GP; the August bank holiday saw almost 700 people go to the emergency department. Hospitals in other parts of the country tend to see reduced pressure in the summer, but the Royal Cornwall is under pressure all year—winter and summer. We also have a super-ageing population—that is not my term, but the NHS’s—because many pensioners choose to retire down in Cornwall.

The current health funding formula does not reflect that seasonal reality or sufficiently account for factors such as population sparsity, rurality or poor transport links, all of which make healthcare much more expensive to provide and all of which affect Cornwall. Our health services are therefore very much overstretched.

The South Western Ambulance Service is the worst-performing ambulance trust in England, and its performance is worst in Cornwall. An April 2025 SWAS performance report showed that Cornwall had the worst category 1 mean response time—nearly 11 minutes, compared with the national target of seven minutes. It is the same for category 2, and the handover time is high as well.

Those ambulance delays have serious consequences. We have ambulances waiting outside our hospital, and in December 2023 two of our coroners wrote to the Secretary of State with a concern about avoidable deaths as a result. They were keen to stress that the challenges are systemic; they are not the fault of the trusts, and they are too big for a single doctor, nurse or paramedic to fix, and too big for the hospital trust or ambulance trust to fix on its own.

The waiting times have actually reduced well over the past year, partly because of the Government’s focus on health and partly because of the work of local health partners and the granular work of the voluntary sector down in Cornwall, including organisations such as the CHAOS Group, Volunteer Cornwall and Age UK. Our foundation trust struggles with large numbers of legacy buildings that have been taken over by NHS Property Services, and it is being charged for rent and maintenance that has not been delivered. Giving control of those buildings back to the trust would help. Our mental health funding is also low, with many patients having to go out of county to be treated.

In summary, our health system is at breaking point. To tackle the systemic issues, we need to recognise that rural and coastal areas face higher costs and additional pressures for care, and we need a fairer formula that truly reflects seasonal demand and rurality.