I beg to move,
That this House has considered ambulance service response times.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this important debate.
Unacceptable ambulance response times have become endemic in the UK, leaving people in pain and distress and costing lives. An estimated 50,000 people died last year after long A&E waits, according to Office for National Statistics data. One of those was Jim’s wife in Street. She was suffering from aggressive liver and bowel cancer and had to wait seven hours in agony for an ambulance in February last year. When the ambulance arrived, Jim and his wife were told that the crew were not trained to take her downstairs, so they were left to wait for another crew. When they arrived, several hours later, Jim’s wife was too ill to be moved and was told that the journey would kill her. She died shortly after.
Jim told me again today how that experience still makes him angry, yet he recognises the perilous state that the NHS is in, caused largely by the last Conservative Government. Like Jim, many people have lost faith in health services after the NHS was stretched and left grossly underfunded as a result of the last Conservative Government’s neglect.
We know that this is having a devastating impact on patients, but it is also impacting the incredibly hard-working medical staff. The 2023 NHS staff survey showed that 39% of ambulance staff respondents often or always felt burnt out. The number is higher for control room staff, at 44%, and higher still for ambulance technicians and paramedics, at 45%. I am sure that Members across the House will join me in thanking and paying tribute to everyone working in the ambulance service whose hard work, dedication and commitment to patient safety is second to none.
Most people in Somerset will sadly know of someone who has faced a heartbreakingly long wait for an ambulance. The family of an 89-year-old Somerton resident told me how they faced a 10-hour wait, stuck in agony on the floor, as no ambulances could come to help them. Another resident told me about their ordeal of having to prop their mother up on the toilet after she had had a fall. They then had to spend 13 long hours waiting for an ambulance to arrive. I am sure other Members will have similar heartbreaking examples.
It is important to understand the context of these examples, so I will briefly outline the NHS targets: seven minutes for category 1 calls, for which 90% of ambulances should arrive within 15 minutes; 18 minutes for category 2 calls, for which 90% of ambulances should arrive within 40 minutes; while 90% of ambulances for category 3 and 4 calls should arrive within two and three hours respectively.
Those targets remain unmet in the south-west, where we have the worst-performing ambulance service in the country. In January 2025, South Western Ambulance Service failed to meet the targets for category 1 and 2 calls. The average time it took to respond to a category 2 call was 51 minutes and 45 seconds—nearly three times slower than the NHS target. This has serious repercussions for people’s health. In every minute that a stroke is left untreated, nearly 2 million brain cells die, and lifesaving treatments such as clot-busting drugs need to be delivered quickly, often within four and a half hours.
I have heard from many constituents across Glastonbury and Somerton who are deeply concerned by the delays in stroke treatment due to ambulance waiting times. These fears are compounded by the planned closure of Yeovil district hospital’s hyper-acute services. The reconfiguration of services will mean that all patients who have suffered a serious life-threatening stroke will be taken to hyper-acute stroke units in Dorchester or Taunton to receive care.
As much as these new cutting-edge services and facilities are welcome in the south-west, the fact remains that if stroke patients or any patient needing emergency treatment gets to hospital too late, the results will be catastrophic without improvements to the ambulance service, and all the best equipment, drugs and treatment by clinicians will have minimal impact on patient outcomes. I have spoken about the impact of these changes on stroke care in this place before. I do not feel it necessary to go into detail again today, suffice to say that ambulance delays only increase the pressure on stroke services. The Liberal Democrats have demanded that localised data on ambulance delays is published, so rural areas like Somerset that are underperforming can receive focused and appropriate support. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that.
Lengthy delays are made all the worse when we consider the impact of drawn-out handover times, meaning ambulance crews are unable to head back out on to the road to pick up more patients. The Darzi review laid bare just how dire the situation has become. In 2024, around 800 working days each day were lost due to handover delays. Incredibly, that is the full-time equivalent of nearly 14,000 paramedics over a year. In addition, ambulances across England collectively spent 112 years waiting outside hospitals to hand over patients in 2023-24.