NHS: Winter Preparedness

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I will ignore the political nonsense about banning strikes and clamping down on trade unions. I will, however, take on directly the charge that we have not prepared for this winter.

We have delivered over 17 million flu vaccinations this season—hundreds of thousands more than this time last year—and 60,000 more NHS staff than last year are also getting their jab. We are on track to deliver the 5 percentage points increase in flu vaccine uptake in healthcare workers, as set out in our urgent and emergency care plan. On children and young people, half a million two to three-year-olds have been vaccinated, which is the same as last year, and 3.6 million school-age children have been vaccinated, which is up 100,000 on last year. We will be going back to schools to do repeat visits in areas where uptake in schools has not been as high as we would like. For care home residents, flu vaccination uptake is 71%. We are on track to meet the RSV vaccination uptake target for 2025-26 in the published urgent and emergency care plan, so we are doing a lot on the vaccination front to prepare.

In fact, on winter planning more generally, we started earlier and did more than ever to prepare for this winter. We had stress-tested winter plans trust by trust. Local NHS leaders ran scenario-based exercises, including managing surges in demand and responding to virus outbreaks to test and strengthen their winter readiness plans, which are now being put into action. We have strengthened access by boosting GP access to keep people well and out of hospital. Through advertising campaigns, new online access routes and more GP practices open for longer hours over the Christmas period, we are making sure more people can be seen closer to home. That matters, because when people can get help early from their GP, they are less likely to end up in A&E.

We are also going further to improve our urgent and emergency care performance this winter. That is set out in our urgent and emergency care plan. We are investing almost £450 million into UEC this winter, meaning: 500 new ambulances on the roads; expanding same-day and urgent treatment centres; providing targeted support to the most challenged trusts; creating capacity and keeping flow moving by sharing weekly data with trusts; encouraging the use of alternative community services; and streamlining in-hospital discharge processes to get patients discharged more quickly from hospital when it is safe to do so, including joining up the NHS and social care, where relationships between health and social care have been improving year on year. If I think about where we are this year compared to last year, there has been sustained improvement. A lot done; more to do.

Of course our job is made harder by strike action. That is why the Government are doing everything we possibly can to get the NHS through this winter. I just wish we were doing it with the BMA, rather than against the BMA.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I would like to pay tribute to all the incredible staff at St George’s hospital in Tooting. I did my A&E shift with them this week, together in the trenches.

The Labour Government inherited an NHS that was bursting at the seams. With flu cases on the rise, the NHS feels as though it is working with one arm tied behind its back. Over half a million people this year were treated in corridors in A&E. That is unsafe and undignified. The all-party parliamentary group on emergency care, which I have the privilege of chairing, working very closely with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, published a report outlining our recommendations to end so-called corridor care. I know this is a matter about which the Secretary of State cares deeply, so will he meet us to discuss the report’s recommendations to provide safe and more dignified care for patients and staff?

[Wes Streeting]

I echo my hon. Friend’s thanks to frontline NHS staff for what they are doing against a very challenging backdrop, which will be made all the more difficult this coming week. I also thank her personally for her ongoing frontline service, which she performs in addition to her duties in this House. I am always delighted to meet her and I would be very happy to discuss her report with her.