NHS Corridor Care

Debate between Monica Harding and Naushabah Khan

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Naushabah Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that very important issue.

Yet while corridor care was rising in our hospitals, the previous Government did not count the numbers. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who as Health Secretary chose to publish the official data, because how can we fix what we cannot measure? I also welcome the steps taken by the Government to turn the tide on the mess we inherited, such as the millions of extra appointments delivered, bringing waiting lists down from record highs, and the commitment to end corridor care by 2029.

However, corridor care does not begin in the corridor itself, as many Members have noted. It begins with the hospital bed that cannot be freed, as well as the lack of investment in the wider landscape and the lack of support in our communities. This January, the data suggested that one in 10 NHS beds were occupied by people who were medically fit to leave but had no safe place to go—a failure that costs the state £2.7 billion a year, and that costs some of our constituents their lives.

[Monica Harding]

My mother, who is 94 and fit and healthy, fell and fractured her collarbone. She went in and was medically discharged on the same day, but because there was no care support for her, she was then in hospital for a week, bed blocking. Because of the quality of care she received, when she came out she ended up with a very severe urinary tract infection and sepsis, and then had to stay in hospital for six weeks. Obviously that cost my mother a lot, but it also cost the NHS a huge amount of money. Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the problems is adult social care and that we need to fix it?

[Naushabah Khan]

The hon. Member makes a very powerful point. I will come to adult social care in a moment.

We simply cannot end corridor care at the front door of the hospital when the back door remains jammed shut. I welcome the steps taken to reform adult social care—a £3.7 billion funding boost for local authorities—but it is clear that we must go further. I eagerly await Baroness Casey’s independent commission on adult social care. However, I am concerned that the review’s terms of reference call for recommendations to be implemented in a phased way over a decade. That is simply not fast enough. Social care reform must work in lockstep with NHS reform. A commission reporting in 2026 and 2028, with implementation stretched over a decade and beyond, will not be able to enact the scale of change needed to meet our targets. I urge the Government to move at pace.