Yesterday in response to a Commons statement, I urged the Health Secretary to take action so people who are taken ill can be confident an ambulance will arrive in their hour of need. A constituent recently shared his horrific experience of going into cardiac arrest in his GP surgery. An ambulance was called but after two hours it became clear it wasn’t coming; doctors chose to drive him to hospital instead. This decision turned out to be life-saving.
Patients’ survival should not depend on the quick thinking of individual doctors.

NHS targets say it should take 8 minutes for an ambulance to reach someone in need of emergency care. After nearly 13 years in charge the Tories do not have a plan to fix the emergency in our NHS – which they’re now even admitting themselves!

As Keir Starmer has said, ‘our NHS is not just on its knees, but on its face.’ Staff are working themselves into the ground and patients’ lives are in danger – now is not the time for the Health Secretary to waffle about ‘opportunity’ and ‘upstream demand management.’ The ambitious workforce strategy Labour has proposed will bring our NHS back from the brink of collapse, and I’m glad to see the Government now recognises that.

Watch clip here.