Stephen Morgan MP has called on the government to adopt Labour’s plan to reduce ambulance wait times, which have become the worst on record under the Conservative government.
The City MP revealed his concern after new figures revealed that a category 3 patient waited 65 hours for an ambulance in December, as waiting times soared to the highest on record.
Ambulance response times across the South Coast are also starkly below their life saving targets, with urgent medical emergencies waiting almost an hour for paramedics to arrive.
For Category 2 calls, which can include strokes, the target is 18 minutes. Patients in Portsmouth were left waiting 40 minutes on average before getting the care they need.
Patients also faced record long waits outside hospitals once ambulances arrived, due to staff and bed shortages, a separate FOI found, with one patient waiting 40 hours in the back of an ambulance outside a hospital in the South West.
A Labour government would solve the crisis in the NHS, committing to train 7,500 more doctors a year, 10,000 more nurses and midwives every year, double the number of district nurses qualifying, and 5,000 more health visitors, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status.
Portsmouth South MP Stephen Morgan said:
“A decade of Conservative mismanagement has left our NHS in the biggest crisis in its history.
The terrifying truth is that people in an emergency can no longer be sure that an ambulance will be there for them when they need it most.
That’s why I’m backing Labour’s plans to reduce ambulance waiting times to ensure patients in Portsmouth who are victims of urgent, and possibly life-threatening, incidents get the care they need.“
Wes Streeting MP, Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, said:
“Patients can no longer trust that an ambulance will reach them in an emergency. Stroke and heart attack victims are left waiting for hours, when every second counts. This is the terrifying reality after 13 years of Conservative understaffing of our NHS.
“Patients should be able to phone 999, safe in the knowledge that they will get an answer and an ambulance when they need it. The longer we give the Conservatives in office, the longer patients will wait.
“Labour will launch the biggest expansion of the NHS workforce in history, training the staff needed to reach patients on time, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. We will ensure the NHS is there for us when we need it once again.”
Mr Morgan has taken a range of actions to improve Portsmouth resident’s access to emergency care, including lobbying for funding to secure a new emergency department at QA hospital, and holding the Government to account on the pressures facing emergency departments in the city.
