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Emergency Care

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which also relates to emergency services in Banbury, even though he is talking about the John Radcliffe. I visited the emergency department at John Radcliffe about three years ago, and the quality of the redesign of emergency services and the service it provided struck me as remarkably good. The issue of capacity is important. It is possible to have a magnificent system that works for normal levels of demand, but if there are abnormal levels of demand, we need to be able to respond to such surges. That is precisely the point made by the College of Emergency Medicine. It says that capacity in emergency departments is critical and that urgent care centres, walk-in centres, minor injury units and polyclinics may all have their place, but it would be foolish to think that they can substitute for emergency departments as the hub of the emergency care system. The resilience of the NHS to surges in demand such as the one that we have seen depends critically on emergency departments having the necessary resources—even more so if we were to encounter a pandemic. It is therefore vital that they are not downgraded or closed without regard to the implications or the evidence.