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Patients suffering in the back of ambulance soars under Labour - with 1,000 per week are put in potentially serious harm
7 April 2025, 06:05 | Updated: 7 April 2025, 09:34
- Sharp rise in the number of patients suffering severe harm as a result of delays - despite the injection of £22.6bn in day-to-day NHS spending
- Target for 15-minute handover from Ambulance to A&E missed over 2,000,000 under Labour - up 20% on comparable period under the Tories.
- Crews have spent the equivalent of 137 years parked outside hospitals in Labour's first eight months
- Around 300,000 patients were potentially put in harm’s way following delays - nearly 1250 patients each day.
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1,000 patients each week have suffered potentially life-threatening harm from being stuck in an ambulance outside A&E departments since Labour came to power, LBC analysis has uncovered.
Sir Keir Starmer placed reviving an ailing health service at the heart of his plans for government, injecting an extra £22.6bn of day-to-day spending to address spiralling NHS waiting lists, which have now fallen for five consecutive months.
However, a concerning story appears to be emerging in the A&E departments of England’s hospitals.
Since Labour’s victory, over 34,000 people have been put in a potentially life-threatening condition as a result of delays from being admitted to A&E.
This is a more than 25% increase on the Tories’ record in the same months during their final year in power, whilst over 160,000 people spent more than two hours in an A&E car park over the same period (up 20%).
Sharan Bandesha, national officer for Unison, the UK’s largest trade union for ambulance staff, described the figures as “astronomically high”.
LBC analysed Labour’s record from the moment they came to power to the end of February, incorporating the government’s first winter overseeing the NHS.
During that period, around 300,000 patients were potentially put in harm’s way following delays - nearly 1250 patients each day.
Under the NHS contract, the transfer of a patient from the back of an ambulance to the floor of an A&E should take no longer than fifteen minutes.
Yet in Wes Streeting’s first eight months as health secretary, this target has been exceeded on more than two million occasions.
In total, ambulance crews have spent close to 1.2 million hours in A&E gridlock - the equivalent of 137 years parked outside hospitals. It makes for uncomfortable reading for the government as, once again, it represents a near-20% increase on the Tories’ record.
LBC’s findings were compiled through a study of figures published by the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, which represents the ten ambulance service providers in England, and come as the station was granted access to an under-pressure A&E department in the West Midlands.
“If we’ve got too many ambulances waiting, they have to [just] wait - even for a rapid assessment,” A&E nurse Emma Crowley told LBC.
As LBC toured Good Hope Hospital, it became clear that the challenges faced by the department were being exacerbated by the number of patients who were requiring so-called ‘corridor care’ because of a lack of available beds.
“You can see this gentleman in the corridor - there’s no privacy, no dignity for him,” Emma laments.
“We shouldn’t really have more than three [being treated in the corridor], but there’s times where we can have up to six or seven patients because we need to move in people who are poorly and need to come into a cubicle.
“That could be my parents or grandparents sitting in the waiting area. I think of my family in these situations all the time… I’d be proud of the care they receive, but I wouldn’t be proud of the length of time that they’re staying.”
Earlier this year, an NHS hospital was criticised for advertising for corridor care nurses during the height of the winter pressures, laying bare the problems many hospitals are facing in needing to treat patients outside of conventional settings.
In December, officials warned about the impact of a “quad-demic” of diseases, including flu, Covid-19, norovirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
On Tuesday, MPs will have the chance to scrutinise Streeting about his handling of the NHS.
Approached with LBC’s findings, a Department of Health Spokesperson said: “We inherited a broken NHS with people waiting far too long for urgent treatment. Long ambulance handover delays are completely unacceptable which is why we are fundamentally reforming the health service through our Plan for Change.
“This includes shifting services from the hospital to the community to ensure patients can access the right treatment closer to home, on top of recruiting an extra 1,000 GPs to reach patients earlier.
“This will free up our under-pressure ambulance services and A&E departments and help reduce waiting times for those in genuine need of urgent care.”
