In an opposition day motion on the NHS crisis, the shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth praised the hard work of NHS staff in the House of Commons and pressed the Health Secretary on “a winter crisis even worse than last year.”
MPs from around the country told horrifying tales of cancelled operations, hospital closures, staff shortages and failures for patient outcomes.
Jonathan Ashworth told how In a hospital ward in Pinderfields Hospital, west Yorkshire, patients were left lying on the floor. And parliament heard how a patient received a blood infusion in a cupboard.
He described stories of “the real people that rely on the NHS that the Government is letting down,” of a hospital in Oxford where there is a “four week delay for all new patients needing chemotherapy,” and a “two-tier chemotherapy system” where those who aren’t on their first course of chemotherapy receive reduced treatment.
Yet his Conservative Party counterpart the Health Secretary was quiet, barely visible until MP’s finished painting a grim picture of a beleaguered NHS let down by failed privatisations, understaffing, closures and under-funding suffering an unprecedented crisis that the Government had been constantly warned of.
Perhaps the worst image of a beleaguered hospital system was the shadow secretary rounding of the emergency debate, telling of an 80 year old epileptic man who had to wait 36 hours on a hospital trolley.
Watch below:
Opposition Day Debate: NHS Winter Crisis
Opposition Day Debate: NHS Winter Crisis
Posted by Parliament Today UK on Wednesday, 10 January 2018
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