It is very concerning to hear that people were waiting more than seven hours at Princess Alexandra’s A&E recently.
I will be writing to the hospital trust’s chief executive to ask what has happened and, crucially, if there is anything I can feed through to ministers to help.
NHS staff are doing a wonderful job in challenging times and I would like to thank them. The impact of Covid has been huge on the NHS with an estimated 12 million staying away during the pandemic. Many are now starting to access services and they are often in much even greater need because of the delay in coming forward.
In addition to those people coming forward, there are issues across the country with access to GPs that is forcing people towards A&E. The Government is pumping record amounts of money into the NHS to tackle these problems and waiting times are starting to improve.
However, we need to see them improve further and I will be happy to do all I can to ensure that waiting A&E times at Princess Alexandra do improve.