will commit the next Labour
government to ending dangerous waiting times in A&E on
Monday, as part of his party’s mission to make the NHS fit for
the future.
His commitment will follow new figures from NHS trusts, revealing
that 23,000 patients lost their lives in A&E in 2022.
The figures, obtained by freedom of information request, show
there were 5,500 more deaths in A&E last year than in 2019.
In just the last year since 2021, the number of patients dying in
A&E increased by 4,000.
Patients waited record lengths of time to be seen in A&E last
year. In April, 113,000 people waited more than the target 4
hours, while 27,000 were forced to waited more than 12 hours. The
NHS standard is for 95% of patients to be seen within four hours,
but that hasn’t been met since 2015. Academic studies have found
that patients who wait longer than four hours in A&E are more
likely to die.
Labour will vow to cut A&E waits and return to safe waiting
times for the vast majority of patients. The party are pledging
to reduce the burden on hospital by reforming the NHS, so it
provides more care in the community and prevents ill-health in
the first place.
Labour’s plan also includes training 7,500 more doctors and
10,000 more nurses a year, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax
status, so the NHS has the staff it needs to treat patients on
time.
, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said:
“People turning to the NHS in an emergency should know they will
be seen and treated before it’s too late. The Conservatives’
failure over 13 years to properly staff or reform the NHS has a
cost in lives.
“When Labour was last in government, patients in an emergency
were treated in good time. It took 13 years for the Conservatives
to break the NHS, it won’t be fixed overnight. But it will be the
mission of the next Labour government to build an NHS that is
there for you when you need it once again.”
Ends
Notes:
- All data from freedom of information requests submitted to
NHS Trusts in England in February 2023, which asked:
How many patient deaths occurred in the A&E department at
your Trust in each of the following calendar years (rather than
financial years): 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, broken down by
month?
The total number of deaths in A&E in each year was:
2018: 17,830
2019: 17,502
2020: 16,776
2021: 19,122
2022: 23,316
