- English Devolution plan: Deafening silence on social care
- Revealed: 15 years of NHS ambulance time wasted already this winter – up from 10.5 years last year
English Devolution plan: Deafening silence on social care
Commenting ahead of government’s English Devolution plan, Liberal Democrat Local Government spokesperson Vikki Slade MP said:
The deafening silence from the government on the social care crisis is hugely concerning.
Council budgets are on the brink. The previous Conservative government pushed so many local authorities to the edge of bankruptcy.
Without properly investing in social care more of the vital services that councils provide will disappear to those who desperately need them.
Revealed: 15 years of NHS ambulance time wasted already this winter – up from 10.5 years last year
15 years of ambulance time was wasted through handover delays in the first two weeks of this winter alone – up from 10.5 years over the same period last year, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.
A handover delay is classed as is any handover by which the ambulance is waiting outside the hospital to release the patient which takes more than 15 minutes.
The number of at least hour long handover delays has risen drastically. In the 2023/24 winter it was 16,423, this winter it is 29,477, a rise of 79%. It means handover delays of an hour or longer now account for 16% of all handovers, up from 9% last winter.
The number of delays taking longer than 30 minutes through the first two weeks of this year has also sky-rocketed by 44%, from 45,152 last year to 64,828 this year. It means that handover delays of over 30 minutes account for 36% of all handovers, rising from 26% last year.
The mean average time for handover delay has also jumped up significantly from 32 minutes to 44 minutes over the past two weeks. A rise of 37%. In total, there have been 130,990 hours worth of handover delays in the past two weeks, the equivalent of 15 years. This is up from 91,645 hours in the 2023/24 winter, a spike of 43%.
NHS England has said that handover delays are a risk to patients and said that they also compromise care in the community as they prevent ambulances from leaving the hospital.
The Liberal Democrats are calling for the government to make sure this is the last winter crisis patients and the health service face. The party is calling for a £1.5bn ring-fenced fund to ‘winterproof’ the NHS. This money would be deployed over the next four years, to build resilience in hospital wards, A&E departments, ambulance services and patient discharging.
Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Helen Morgan MP said:
This winter promises to be one of the most challenging on record. We are not even into the depths of winter yet but we are already seeing worrying trends that this year could be even worse than last, and we all know how tough that was.
We cannot allow this situation to spiral. Failure to get ahead of this crisis could lead to hospitals being overwhelmed and patients suffering the consequences.
The government must come forward with a plan to put in place measures to address this alarming situation. They also need to set out plans to winterproof the NHS so this is the last winter crisis the health service and patients ever face.
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5 Comments
English devolution plan: if I understand current proposals, they amount to a rejection of having an elected parliament/government similar to what exists in the other 3 countries of the United Kingdom, at the same time as District Councils are abolished and their powers transferred to larger regional councils. This is the complete opposite of any possible interpretation of the idea of ‘devolution’, which is supposed to be about transferring power from the centre to more appropriate and more local levels of governance. What a complete joke! I trust Liberal Democrat MPs will oppose this farce.
What Mary says plus they are trying to concentrate all the power in the hands of individuals with no effective democratic opposition.
I agree with Mary and Peter. I am fortunate to live in a two-tier local authority area with a Lib Dem Borough Council, and reading the devolution plan it sounds like their idea of “devolution” is to move power further away from me, not towards me.
The plan says “Unitary councils can lead to better outcomes for residents, save significant money which can be reinvested in public services, and improve accountability with fewer politicians who are more able to focus on delivering for residents”. Is there any objective evidence to support those statements? How can those fewer Councillors, each representing a lot more people, be more accountable?
We must fight it and vote against it.
I suspect the plan is as much to do with balancing the books as any commitment to devolution. It might also be a diversionay tactic away from the dire need for electoral reform. Though these are distinct policies they are interrelated and PR will improve our democracy whatever form of devolved government we have.