Rosena Allin-Khan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  As I stand here now to give my closing remarks, I am filled with a sense of pride. There are very few occasions when we all come together across the House in unison on an issue. Today is an example of where Members from every party and those who sit as independents have come together to say: enough is enough, we all stand united against the scourge that is corridor care. It would not be fair of me to single out individual contributions, because they were all worthy of accolades. Members have shared their own deeply personal experiences or those of their families. They have highlighted how important it is that we understand the geographical implications of how this is a challenge that does not require a one-size-fits-all approach. I am really pleased to hear the commitments from the Minister, especially as we know that, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, 1,300 excess deaths occur every month due to long A&E waits. That is the equivalent of a plane crash of people dying every single week. We cannot allow that to happen. I appreciate everything the Minister said, but my closing request is this. Can we please do everything we can to heed the remarks of everyone across the House today and speed up whatever we can to ensure there is not a single excess death attributed to something that could be avoided? For every person who dies when it could have been prevented, we have a family in grief and a life taken too soon. If we know there are things we could be doing—money we could be spending, a social care system we could be fixing to ensure people have extra precious time with their loved ones and that people have dignity on what is, on many occasions, the last day of their lives—we must spend every ounce of energy in the Department of Health and Social Care to fix this problem. I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate and I thank the Minister. Let us end corridor care for good. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered NHS corridor care.

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  I think my hon. Friend has been on most of my last A&E shifts with me. [Laughter.] That is absolutely a common occurrence, and that is not the best, safest or most efficient place for any of our incredible teams of police officers and mental health nurses, who are trying to get on with their job. It is incredibly distressing. In parts of hospitals, colleagues tell me that they are waiting in relatives’ rooms with police officers and mentally unwell patients next to the resus area of an A&E department with bereaved families. None of that should be happening for anyone involved. I am sure the Minister will agree that the best solution to this crisis will involve a holistic, multi-agency approach involving councils, social care providers and NHS trusts. As I have just outlined, this unacceptable and dangerous situation is shared not just by patients, but by their families and NHS staff, who are trying to do their best in a difficult situation. Moving on to the professional bodies, corridor care has rightly been condemned by the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine—my royal college—the British Medical Association, and other professional bodies and trade unions. Some 65% of respondents to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s violence and aggression survey, which is due to be published later this year, said that care in inappropriate and non-clinical spaces contributes to the increase in violence and aggression towards staff and other patients. The impact of corridor care is clearly much more wide-reaching than we realise. It results in violence against our own NHS heroes—the very best of humanity—who, in a fractured and dangerous world, exemplify compassion, decency and selfless care for strangers. I can tell the House beyond a shadow of a doubt that staff in emergency settings are upset, traumatised and driven to tears of rage, and we know that NHS staff have to take a disproportionately large number of days off for the sake of their mental health.

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  Thank you very much for raising that, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am nothing if not a talker. I am sorry that I am taking such a long time, and I will move forward quickly with my speech. The Royal College of Emergency Care and I, as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on emergency care, have put together a number of recommendations. First, restore patient flow by reducing delayed discharges; secondly, focus equally on four-hour and 12-hour performance; thirdly, reform funding and incentives; fourthly, spread responsibility for patient flow across the hospital; and lastly, address inequalities in access and outcomes. We cannot have a debate like this without recognising the terrible inequalities that scar our healthcare service—we have to work to reduce the disproportionate burden of long waits on deprived communities, older patients and people with mental health needs. Those measures would make a real difference to hospital systems, patient experience, and the overall effectiveness of the NHS. The founding principles of the NHS are stretched to breaking point every time someone waits for 10 hours, in terrible pain and sometimes in their own urine, under the harsh strip lights of a corridor, unable to feel that they can ask for help. It is completely undignified. The Minister will be very familiar with the stats we have sent to the Department, which show the disproportionate number of deaths in our country that are due to corridor care. The fact that we in the UK have people dying because they have been treated in a corridor is simply unacceptable to me and other Members of this House, so let us commit today to ending it once and for all, and ending corridor care forever.