MPs hold emergency debate on A&E ‘crisis’

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham, who called the debate, said accident and emergency departments were being overwhelmed by the failure of the NHS 111 phone service and the closure of walk-in centres.

He said A&E units were being closed in the midst of a major re-organisation of the health service, asking: “How can it make sense to close A&Es in the middle of an A&E crisis?”

Mr Burnham said the NHS was having to cope with budget cuts and re-organisation at the same time, adding: “This is a crisis that could have been avoided. They were warned about this A&E crisis, but ploughed on regardless.”

But Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said a million more people were being treated in A&E than in 2010, when the coalition came to power.

NHS ‘doing better’

He said: “The NHS is doing better under the coalition than it ever did under Labour”, adding that in Wales, where the Labour-led Welsh assembly runs the NHS, the health service budget had been cut by 8 per cent and the performance of A&E units was worse than in England.

Mr Hunt said A&E units had faced further pressure following Labour’s decision to scrap GPs’ responsibility for out-of-hours care.

The King’s Fund think tank says the NHS failed to meet its A&E waiting time target – of 95 per cent of people being seen within four hours – in the first three months of 2013.

At prime minister’s questions, Mr Cameron admitted that waiting times increased at the start of the year, but said the government was now working to cut them, while Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, would be holding an investigation into what happened.

In an exchange with Labour leader Ed Miliband, the prime minister said in-patient and out-patient waiting times had fallen since the election, with more operations carried out every year and more doctors employed.

NHS "reconfiguration": not as scary as patients think. Read Victoria Macdonald's blog.

The debate follows the publication of a report by doctors, managers and patients which warns that up to 20 hospitals may have to close to prevent the NHS from collapsing because of financial pressures.

The report, by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the NHS Confederation and the National Voices patient group, says resources need to be transferred from hospitals to the community, with an expansion of GP surgeries, health centres and district nursing.

At the same time, a poll by the Foundation Trust Network, which represents more than 200 health trusts in England, shows that seven in ten trusts believe the A&E system is at a “tipping point”.

Six out of ten trusts expect the coming winter to be worse than last year.