NHS Corridor Care

I beg to move, That this House has considered NHS corridor care. I express my sincere thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time to the important subject of corridor care, and I declare my interest as a proud serving NHS emergency doctor working in A&E at St George’s hospital in my Tooting constituency. In my 21 years as a doctor—I know; I can hear the audible gasp because I do not look old enough—I have never felt more proud to serve with a group of individuals such as those at St George’s hospital. The leadership team, to which we welcome a new CEO in Mat Shaw, and the team of nurses, doctors, reception staff, porters and healthcare assistants in my emergency department, make me proud to go and do every single shift that I do there, and it feels like a pleasure, not a chore.

I thank my hon. Friend for her fantastic work in the NHS as a doctor; it is much appreciated. Like many NHS workers, she struggles against the odds and sees on a daily basis the impact of corridor care. Does she agree that NHS staff feel frustration with corridor care as much as patients do, and that they want to act and see it end as much as anyone else? Crucially, the key is more staff. Is that not, ultimately, what we all want?

My hon. Friend and I are not performing a double act today, but he leads me on perfectly to the next part of my speech, as I go on to say that “corridor care” is something of a misnomer. Treatment in a corridor, far away from oxygen, proper equipment and emergency cords to pull, without privacy or dignity, without access to decent and appropriate toilet facilities, and without the highest standard of infection prevention and control, cannot be classified as care in any realistic sense. It is important to say that the staff go above and beyond with what they have. It is not the case that patients are suffering in pain because the staff do not care or do not provide a first-class service; it is because, quite simply, a corridor or any other space not built to serve and care for patients in is not the right place for a patient to be. It is not just corridors, because patients across the NHS have been seen in antenatal rooms, store cupboards, waiting rooms and even car parks, filling every conceivable inch of a hospital. Members can imagine that people are coming in feeling particularly vulnerable, and they are happy to get the care wherever they can get it. I have never heard of any of my colleagues across the country say that they have had a patient who refused to be seen in a cupboard; they are just grateful to be seen. Even the official definition of so-called corridor care is problematic. NHS data relies on local clinical judgment about whether an environment is safe and whether patients’ privacy and dignity are being maintained. Trusts are applying these standards differently, and some feel the need, sadly, to game the system to artificially lower their corridor care statistics.

I would just like to highlight that the Scottish Government do not record or publish any statistics on the number of patients being treated in corridors. However, we know that it happens. The Crosshouse hospital, which serves my constituency, was recorded in January as having one of Scotland’s most under-pressure emergency departments. It exceeded capacity by 50% in December, revealing corridor care conditions in the hospital. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to record accurate data so that we can track improvement?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am so sorry to hear of the situation in her community in Scotland. It is regrettable, and patients and their families deserve better. Absolutely, if we cannot accurately assess the issue in full, it is impossible to deal with, and I hope the Minister will talk today about how she will commit to revising this definition to make it more robust.

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate and for allowing me to intervene. The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS trust published data about patients in corridors for the first time only in May, and in that month it recorded 121 patients per day being treated outside clinical rooms and areas. A constituent of mine, Catherine, wrote to me to describe seeing at first hand elderly people waiting in corridors for hours with no family members to support them. Does the hon. Member agree that corridor care has moved from being an exceptional problem to an everyday issue in many NHS trusts, and that the Government must act to address the root cause of this issue?

The hon. Member is right, but I know that the Government care deeply about this. This is not something on which I am in tension with the Government in any way. I have spoken to the Ministers and the Secretary of State, and I know that they are committed to acting and ensuring that every single patient across our country gets the best possible care. Let us be really clear: the NHS should not be a political football. Safe and dignified healthcare should not be a political football. I hope that we are all in agreement on this issue today. I would have hoped to see more Members on the Opposition Benches today, and I hope that their absence is not a reflection of how much they care about the issue, because, quite frankly, we owe it to all our communities to get this right. I know from my own experience, as will other hon. Friends in the Chamber, that when someone comes to A&E, it is often the worst day of their life. It could be the worst day of their life because of their experience as a patient, or it could be the worst day of their life because someone they love—their child, their partner, their mother or their father—is dying or has died. When we think about the dignity and care that we give, we have to look at it holistically—not simply as a set of symptoms that we are treating but as a family and the experience that they take away with them of what has happened on that day. People are in tears, people are in pain, and we owe it to them to get this right.

Many people in my constituency have written about experiencing corridor care, and that loss of dignity when vulnerable and elderly patients are sitting in corridors. Does the hon. Member agree that we desperately need urgent action to ensure that dignity is prioritised wherever care is given?

That is absolutely right—the hon. Member makes a valid point. People can be enduring a heart attack; they can be losing a baby; they can have had a road traffic accident and be lying on a trolley, blocked and collared, or lying on a board and looking up at the ceiling, wondering when they might make it into the scanner. People will definitely be having a time in hospital that will be etched on their memory, and sadly for many patients, and many loved ones, that is the last day they will ever see—the A&E will be the last place they know. In the NHS we want that experience to be as comfortable and reassuring as possible. We want the best possible care, delivered in the fastest possible time, to patients who are treated fairly, efficiently, and with compassion and dignity. Frankly, that is impossible in a corridor, even with the greatest will in the world. In my A&E at St George’s hospital we have patients in corridors, as we do across the country, but we have nurses who are there and dedicated to check their observations, ask if they need pain relief, and try to deliver—and they do—the best possible gold-standard care. But there is no privacy in a corridor, or in a cupboard, or anywhere where there should be, and that simply is not right. In emergency departments across the country, regardless of data that some trusts try to put forward to show that it is in only a certain number of places, we know from our inboxes that corridor care is everywhere.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. She has spoken about some of the impacts of this issue. My 80-odd-year-old mum was recently admitted to Airedale hospital with acute respiratory issues. She had to wait in a chair for over 12 hours, alongside my dad, in a very undignified way. Does my hon. Friend agree that ideally we should be preventing admissions for older and frail patients, and does she believe that the stronger proactive primary and community care services proposed by the Government with neighbourhood health teams could help to prevent some admissions for older and frail elderly people like my mum?

I hope my hon. Friend’s mum is making a swift and healthy recovery, and I am sorry to hear that that was her family’s experience. I agree that prioritising care for the frailer, elder population can often be dealt with more effectively before someone comes to hospital. I also know that my hospital of St George’s in Tooting has a special dedicated frailty unit that goes a long way in speeding things up for people. Good pilots are going on across the country, where care can be taken to our elderly community before people come in. Tackling social care is something I am coming to in my speech, because we could not have a speech on corridor care without a huge nod—or an entire body bend—to social care and the need to fix it. While this situation is extremely hard for patients and their families, the toll it takes on healthcare staff is huge. By healthcare staff I do not just mean doctors such as myself, but nurses, porters, healthcare assistants and cleaners—we are one big family in the NHS, and no one job is more important than any other. We are unable to do any of our roles without all the others, and for that we are truly grateful. Knowing that they might be caring for a patient in their mid-80s, who is trying to hold back tears because they do not want to upset anybody very publicly in a corridor, is absolutely heartbreaking and takes a toll on their mental health. Our nurses, doctors and all the staff I have mentioned are going home absolutely burnt out—this is not what they trained and studied for, and not what they go to work to deliver. They go to work to deliver the best possible gold-standard care for the community that they care about.

On my hon. Friend’s point about burnout, we are entering what for many Cornish men and women is the dreaded tourist season, when our population doubles or trebles. My constituents in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle are concerned about the chronic capacity issues and the impact of the tourist season on patient safety at Treliske, our one general hospital that covers the whole of Cornwall. Does my hon. Friend agree that NHS workforce planning and funding for places like Cornwall need to reflect the additional pressures placed on healthcare services during periods of peak tourist activity?

I remember meeting my hon. Friend before he became an MP when I visited a hospital in his community, and I know that he has been a powerful advocate from long before he came to this place. I thank him for that and for raising this issue. We often think about winter pressures and forget that different communities experience different pressures—it is not a one-size-fits-all situation. It is important to look at the tourist season in Cornwall, and I am hopeful that the Government take that into account in their planning. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be appalled, as we all are, to know that there are places up and down the country where bodies are being wheeled to the mortuary past living patients in corridors. People are spending hours in pain and distress, desperate for privacy, and exhausted staff are working while feeling that they have one arm tied behind their back.

My hon. Friend is being generous in taking interventions. There are few Members of this House, if any, who know about this subject in more detail than her. In Scotland, where my own constituents are facing the problem of corridor care, the Royal College of Nursing said a few weeks ago that we are “trailing behind” even what is happening in England, partly because the NHS in England is publishing statistics on corridor care. Does she agree that the Scottish Government should do the same so that we can track corridor care and therefore help resolve it?

My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for the people of Scotland. Yes, of course those statistics should be published, because in order to have any understanding of the issue, we have to have the data. Quite frankly, without the data, it is “not happening”. We should keep pushing for that and I hope that he puts the clip of him asking this question on social media to spark a little fire under some boffins to make that happen. The reality is that corridor care is happening in every corner of the country. The drivers of the issue of corridor care are multifaceted, but one key cause that we cannot escape is our failing social care system that forces medically fit patients to sit and wait in hospital beds, seemingly endlessly. Without a hospital back door that works efficiently, we simply cannot get people through the front door to treat them effectively and move them on appropriately. The social care sector must be empowered because that will prevent hospital admissions in the first place and support timely discharges. All sorts of unappealing names are given to people who have to spend a long time in hospital waiting for appropriate social care. Our vulnerable elderly, our grandmas and grandpas, are called bed blockers because they cannot get the social care that they need to safely be in their own homes. This requires a complete change in thinking and approach, one that understands the inherent link between the NHS and social care. Most significantly, we need leadership that is willing to address the crisis with the urgency it deserves, so that people get the highest quality of care.

One of my relatives went into hospital to get intravenous antibiotics but later died in that hospital due to being stuck there. She was ready to move on to a community hospital, but she gave up because she was scared in the hospital—they did not keep an eye on her, she fell out of bed and cracked her head open, and she later passed away. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need a lot more investment in social care to ensure that does not happen and our relatives do not have to go into hospital in the first place?

I am heartbroken to hear about the hon. Member’s relative. This is the point: anyone who works in a hospital understands that, just by being in an emergency department waiting room and accessing people who are unwell, it is possible to catch other illnesses. One thing we try to do is prevent unnecessary admission, because we know that a vulnerable elderly person who comes to hospital and is admitted to a ward with people who are unwell is more at risk of catching illnesses. As in the case of the relative of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance), people can be vulnerable and not in an appropriate bed. There may not be enough staff able to check on them appropriately. Without tackling social care, we will never get on top of that issue. I am truly sorry to hear about the hon. Member’s relative. Simply put, we cannot dither or delay; we need answers to the social care crisis, and we need them quickly. Another group of people who are very often overlooked are mental health patients. They continue to spend extraordinary amounts of time waiting in A&E. People experiencing a mental health crisis are two-and-a-half times more likely to face long delays in A&E. Just for a moment, let me paint a picture of what that looks like. The patient could be somebody with auditory or visual hallucinations who feels extremely scared and vulnerable. They may need security to ensure that they do not leave their room. They may be wondering what they have done to deserve this. They may not have staff there who know about their usual medication. Very often, they are shouting very loudly, and other patients will be concerned, not understanding that they have a mental health issue. As doctors and nurses, we are not allowed to talk about somebody else in the hospital, so we can have a very loud A&E department, with someone who is very vulnerable—screaming and shouting and really suffering—being completely in the wrong place for so long and with everyone confused about why they are there. That is not appropriate, safe or dignified for mental health patients. We are as far away as ever from parity between mental and physical health in the NHS. As I have just outlined, we witness that daily in emergency departments across the country. We need to create more partnerships between our emergency departments and mental health trusts, where mental health patients can be triaged and seen by a mental health team in a more dignified and appropriate manner. St George’s hospital, where all hon. Members will know by now that I work my A&E shifts, is exploring a partnership with South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust, which would set up an assessment unit to triage mental health patients outside the emergency department. That would be safer, more appropriate and more dignified, and a calmer and more pleasant environment in which those patients could be assessed by mental health professionals.

Does my hon. Friend agree that often this is compounded when somebody has been arrested and police officers are sitting for hours? I was recently in A&E, and there were two police officers there for the duration that a member of the public was there. They may also need somewhere else to deal with that situation.

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.

The hon. Member is making a fantastic speech. On the topic of staff, one of the biggest problems in Yeovil hospital is bullying culture, as we saw in the Baroness Amos report in relation to maternity. Does the hon. Member believe that staff should be free to speak up without the worry of losing their job?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Although it digresses from the debate about corridor care, I will happily answer his question. I think everybody in the NHS must be able to go to work free of intimidation, bullying and harassment. Wherever that happens, people should feel free to speak out—not to their direct line manager, because very often they are involved, but to a safe third party within the hospital, clinic or public setting where it happens, so that they will not be concerned about finding themselves moved or no longer in the job they love. I thank the hon. Member for raising that point; I have gone off topic, but it is an important point to acknowledge.

I am sure the hon. Lady understands how much support there is in the Chamber for this debate, and will be coming to a conclusion shortly.

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.

We will start with an immediate five-minute time limit.

I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for setting out so brilliantly, with her professional expertise and human touch, what it means for corridor care to be a normal habit across the NHS in all parts of the country—not just in the winter, with winter pressures, but throughout the year. She made many good points, and I hope I can add some context with the stories I have gathered in Mid Sussex, from constituents who have experienced corridor care first-hand, whether as patients or staff. They have shared some of the most frightening, painful and vulnerable moments of their lives with me. First, I thank them, and to those whose stories I cannot share today due to a lack of time, I apologise. Many of those people wanted the House to be told one thing before anything else: the staff who cared for them were extraordinary. They spoke of nurses who never stopped smiling despite being exhausted, doctors who apologised because they knew patients deserved better, and paramedics who stayed compassionate under impossible pressure. One constituent arrived at the Princess Royal hospital in Haywards Heath after falling and breaking both a shoulder and a kneecap. It was a Friday night, and A&E was overflowing. After X-rays, they spent hours on a trolley in a corridor beside the nurses’ station because there was nowhere else for them to go. They told me that the nurses were attentive and kind throughout the night. They checked in constantly and did everything they could. However, kindness cannot create another treatment cubicle, compassion cannot magic up another doctor, and dedication cannot create a bed that is simply not there. Another constituent, Chris Philpot, shared an experience that I found impossible to forget. Following a ruptured appendix and serious complications, he spent 19 hours on a trolley in the corridor at the Royal Sussex county hospital. During that time, he watched an elderly lady have her blood pressure taken while resting her arm on his leg because there was nowhere else to support it. No privacy, no dignity—that is not the standard of care patients should expect in modern Britain.

My hon. Friend has just highlighted a point that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). That kind of experience causes concern not only for its lack of dignity, but for infection control, antimicrobial resistance and hospital-acquired infections. That kind of treatment not only has a lack of dignity, but can be lethal. That is a huge public health issue, which my hon. Friend’s specific example highlights.

I agree with my hon. Friend. What we see time and again is that one problem becomes another until eventually the patient pays the price. My constituent, Catherine Jeater, has seen corridor care as a patient and as a relative of a patient. She watched her father being treated for appendicitis in an emergency department that was so overcrowded that patients were double-parked on trolleys, changing into hospital gowns in full view of strangers. Months later, while undergoing chemotherapy herself, she attended the Princess Royal hospital with a chest infection. Because she was immunocompromised, she should have been isolated. Instead, she received intravenous antibiotics sitting on a chair in a corridor, because no cubicles were available. She told me the staff were amazing, but she also made it clear that amazing staff should never have to work in those conditions Perhaps the most difficult responses I have received were from the healthcare professionals themselves. One doctor told me that they regularly examine patients in corridors. Another said that corridor care is not just an A&E problem, and that it is now normal for people to be on trolleys in non-clinical areas throughout the hospital. That means there are no curtains to provide privacy, no piped oxygen and no name above the bed, and patient safety is inevitably compromised. A senior nurse described to me the moral injury that they and their colleagues face every day, having to try to deliver the best care possible in terrible conditions, all the while apologising for something that is beyond their power to fix. They have to do that every single day. I am not personally enjoying this third heat wave, but imagine A&E departments without air conditioning: they become furnaces. Imagine trying to treat incredibly frail patients when the temperature in a corridor is 40°C. Another clinician wrote something that stopped me in my tracks. They said that corridor care had become so common that they were teaching medical students and junior doctors how to provide it—and that is not just during winter pressures, but all year round. This should trouble every single one of us. We are training the next generation of clinicians to adapt to something that should never have become normal in the first place. The real danger is not simply that corridor care exists, and not that we begin to accept it, but that we shrug our shoulders and tell ourselves that this is just how the NHS works now. The solutions are not easy—hospitals cannot fix this on their own—but we do need to get it right. We need to invest in capacity, in workforce, in social care, and in reducing waiting lists so that treatable conditions do not turn into emergencies.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am sorry, but I will not, in the interests of time. This is happening not because our NHS staff are failing, but because they are being asked to deliver excellent care in circumstances that make excellence almost impossible. My constituents have not shared these stories because they have lost faith in the NHS; they have shared them because they believe that the NHS can and should be better than this. Let me therefore end with a plea that we never describe corridor care as the “new normal”, because there is nothing normal about receiving intravenous antibiotics during chemo in a corridor. There is nothing normal about waiting 19 hours on a trolley. There is nothing normal about losing your privacy, your dignity, and sometimes even your safety, simply because there is nowhere else to go. The NHS was founded on the belief that every person matters. We need to make that happen once again.

Let me first offer huge thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for her brilliant speech, and for the work that she does most weeks and about which, in my opinion, she does not speak loudly enough. My mum has been rushed to A&E twice in the last two months, and I have been with her. The paramedics were amazing and the hospital staff were amazing, but nothing prepared me for what I witnessed: trolley after trolley backed up along corridors as hospital staff and family members visiting patients in A&E walked hurriedly up and down, trying to cause as little disruption as they possibly could. I saw staff trying to pull a curtain across halfway down the corridor to provide some semblance of dignity for vulnerable patients who were trying to use bedpans, but it was futile, given the number of people walking up and down. It was harrowing. I can only describe it as something that one would see in a war zone rather than in modern Britain. When I asked the staff, “Is it always like this?” they said, “Yes. It comes and goes when it gets busy. It gets worse at weekends. But ultimately we do not have enough beds, and we do not have enough staff to be able to cope with this level of pressure.” I heard similar stories from my constituents, but I will give the House just one today. An 80-year-old who attended A&E with his frail wife spent 15 hours there, eight in a wheelchair and the rest on a trolley in a corridor. This is not just a symptom of winter pressures; it is the visible sign of a healthcare system that has been stretched beyond breaking point by years of political decisions. For years we saw hospital beds disappear, staff vacancies grow, social care neglected, community health services hollowed out, and local authority budgets slashed, and the consequences were entirely predictable. Now we see patients who are well enough to leave hospital but have nowhere to go, emergency departments overflowing with wait times that no sick person should ever have to endure, and people being treated in places that were never designed to deliver healthcare. No one should pretend that this can be fixed overnight, but if we are honest, we know that we have to act fast. Emergency departments are still operating beyond safe capacity, and people remain stuck in hospital because social care, community services, mental health support and general practice still do not have the necessary capacity. If we want to end corridor care, we must deal with its root causes, not just the consequences, because it does not just begin when someone arrives at A&E; it begins when they cannot get a GP appointment, when mental health support is not there, when local authorities cannot provide a care package. It begins when care cannot happen at home. Community nurses who should be visiting vulnerable patients regularly cannot do so, because they are stretched beyond breaking point. There is a lot of talk about virtual wards providing hospital-grade care at home. That sounds brilliant, but the fact is that the system does not have the staff capacity to deliver it, so we need a properly funded long-term workforce plan that delivers fair pay, expands education and apprenticeships, improves retention, ensures that we have safe staffing standards, and gives frontline staff a real voice in how services are designed. It also means finally delivering a national care service that brings care back under public ownership and control, that delivers a universal entitlement to care based on need, not ability to pay, and that is publicly accountable, properly funded and built around people’s needs, not the fragmented marketised provision that we see at the moment. It also means investing in community nursing, neighbourhood health teams, rehabilitation services and mental health, so that fewer people reach crisis and more people can leave hospital safely when they are ready. It means taking prevention seriously too, because every £1 spent on improving housing, reducing child poverty, cleaning up our air, and supporting healthier communities strengthens public health and saves many more pounds further down the line. Our NHS was founded on a simple principle—healthcare should be based on need, not the ability to pay—and corridor care betrays that principle. We need to see our Government restore the promise that when someone is at their most vulnerable, our national health service will be there for them—not in a corridor or on a trolley, but with the compassion, privacy and care that every person deserves.

I thank the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for securing the debate. This is a really important topic, and I do not think there has been enough focus on it in the last few years. Her speech was very powerful, and the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) made really important points about corridor care not happening in a silo. There is a wider system of things going on, so we need to look at this more broadly. I feel strongly about this issue because I have seen the shocking reality for myself at East Surrey hospital, in my constituency, and at St Helier hospital, which is outside my constituency but serves some of my constituents. Patients are being cared for in spaces that were never designed for clinical treatment, and staff are trying their best to do their jobs in impossible circumstances. I cannot imagine how upsetting it must be to go into hospital with a serious medical problem, only to spend hours on a trolley, surrounded by noise and footfall and without any sort of privacy, and to be denied basic dignity. In fact, I saw one example of a patient who was near automatic doors, which opened and shut every time someone walked past them. That is not dignified or appropriate in any shape or form. How can it be right that doctors are forced to discuss private medical matters with patients in public hallways, or even to attempt examinations and treatment without the facilities that they need being close at hand? Let me be clear: all the staff I met on my visits were doing the best they could in extremely difficult circumstances. The problem was not down to their lack of commitment or compassion; it was down to a system that is operating without enough physical space to meet the excessive demand placed upon it. The previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), promised to eliminate corridor care by the next general election in 2029, and we need to understand how it will be addressed. I think we all accept that this is not an easy thing to solve, but it would be good to know what steps will be taken to address this big issue. The crux of the issue appears to be hospital flow. Emergency departments cannot move patients into wards when beds are full, and beds remain occupied when people who are medically fit to leave cannot access the care, rehabilitation or support that they need outside hospital. Delayed discharge therefore remains part of the problem. Without sufficient social care capacity, community service and intermediate care, hospitals cannot safely discharge patients. At St Helier, there is another fundamental issue: physical space. The hospital is trying to offer a modern service in buildings that the trust says are no longer fit for purpose. Much of the estate is older than the NHS itself, and staff contend with leaking roofs, flooding, damp, mould and buildings that are difficult to keep at a suitable temperature. Those conditions make it harder to provide safe care, and place still more pressure on staff, who are already overstretched. One example of the type of challenge is the women’s health block, which is currently a big issue. Routine testing has identified low levels of legionella and pseudomonas in the water supply. While filters have been installed and regular testing commenced, that highlights the fact that these measures are not a sustainable long-term solution, given the age and complexity of the building’s water system. This is hugely disappointing for patients and staff, particularly considering the hard work that has gone into improving the hospital’s women’s health services. That is why I strongly support the planned new specialist emergency care hospital in Sutton to be delivered alongside significant investment to modernise both St Helier and Epsom hospitals. The new hospital would bring together major emergency care, acute medicine, critical care and emergency surgery in modern facilities designed around the needs of patients and staff, while crucially leaving 85% of services at the existing hospital sites. This is exactly the sort of investment urgently needed to reduce overcrowding and end the indignity of patients being treated in corridors, yet the start of construction has been delayed—pushed back to 2033. I urge the Government to reconsider that timeframe, as that would be important in helping to address the challenge we face with corridor care.

Order. The speaking limit will drop to three minutes after the next speaker.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for bringing this important matter to the House, and for talking so eloquently about her experiences on the frontline. Few issues speak to the state of our national health service more than this one. Since being elected, my inbox and advice surgeries have been inundated with heartbreaking and, frankly, harrowing stories from constituents who have either experienced care in a hospital corridor themselves or have witnessed the experiences of loved ones. May alone saw more than 90,000 instances of patients receiving care in clinically inappropriate settings, which is almost 3,000 people every day across our nation. In their most vulnerable hour, patients are being stripped of privacy and dignity, and left without a call bell or even sometimes access to a toilet. I will give Members some examples of the cases that have been raised with me. One constituent wrote to say that their mother, who was on end-of-life care, was treated in a corridor. I cannot even begin to imagine how distressing that must have been. Another reported on how she was treated in a single patient cubicle that had been stripped of its bed and fitted with six chairs, and hearing other people’s medical history, watching their cannulas being inserted and, harrowingly, witnessing a confused elderly man beg for his daughter. I look to Conservative Members—unfortunately, not many of them are here—when talking about this and about exactly how we got here, because the normalisation of these practices over 14 years of Conservative Government has brought us to this point. Indeed, it was under their watch that 12-hour waits in A&E rose twentyfold. Lord Darzi’s report laid it all bare. We inherited a health service in a critical condition and broken by over a decade of under-investment.

It is important to recognise this wider legacy. In my area of Reading, we are waiting for a new hospital to be built. One was promised by the last Government, but no funding was provided, and there are very real-world implications of continuing with old buildings in such a state, like our A&E. I appreciate my hon. Friend raising this matter, and I look forward to the Minister providing further details.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that very important issue. Yet while corridor care was rising in our hospitals, the previous Government did not count the numbers. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who as Health Secretary chose to publish the official data, because how can we fix what we cannot measure? I also welcome the steps taken by the Government to turn the tide on the mess we inherited, such as the millions of extra appointments delivered, bringing waiting lists down from record highs, and the commitment to end corridor care by 2029. However, corridor care does not begin in the corridor itself, as many Members have noted. It begins with the hospital bed that cannot be freed, as well as the lack of investment in the wider landscape and the lack of support in our communities.