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Emergency Care

I understand the hon. Lady's point, but I think that she does us a disservice. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), not least, has made clear our determination to pursue prosecutions. To my recollection, there are something like 55,000 assaults a year on NHS staff, less than one in 1,000 of which leads to a prosecution. What is the point of putting up notices across NHS buildings saying that there will be zero tolerance of assaults on NHS staff if people know that in practice, those who commit exactly that offence will not be prosecuted? We make it clear in our motion that we want an urgent care strategy. The Government have promised that; they held a consultation in October 2006 and published the responses six months later. Two years on, they have not published a strategy. They said that the matter would be dealt with in the Darzi review, but the final Darzi report contains two references to urgent care, which are essentially nothing more than references to the single telephone number that I have already talked about. Where, then, is the urgent care strategy that is required? Everywhere I go across the country, people are looking for urgent care networks and for a better structure of urgent care that better knits together A and E, walk-in centres, out-of-hours services, ambulance services and NHS Direct, and presents seamless joined-up care for patients. It is vital that we achieve that. I thank the Government because they have accepted the first part of our motion in their amendment, and I appreciate that. Indeed, they have expressed their recognition of the work of community first responders. In some parts of the country, such as Cheshire, that is not reflected in the behaviour of the ambulance service. Community first responders in rural areas make a vital contribution to response times, especially category B response times, but their achievement does not appear to be recognised. However, I appreciate the Government's approach to that. Despite that approach, the Government have gone on to delete a great deal that is necessary in the motion and replace it with some deeply flawed text. They persist with the idea that improvements in primary care and access to GPs is a substitute for access to emergency departments and emergency care. That is not the point, as the College of Emergency Medicine makes clear. It stated:"““It is disingenuous to compare a 24/7 service that cares for the whole spectrum of ill and injured patients with the care of routine patients in a GP surgery.””" ““Disingenuous”” is not a word that I would normally apply to the Secretary of State. The idea probably emanated from the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw). I hope that we have shown that we appreciate NHS staff who work in emergency care. I think that we show that we appreciate them if we listen to them. They need a major trauma network, but the Government are letting action on the national confidential inquiry report drift. The urgent care strategy and the single number seems to have been delayed and delayed, and the Government's assumption that patients will not turn up at accident and emergency has been proved false and—worse—dangerous. With beds being cut and A and E departments downgraded, the capacity to deal with surges in demand is being undermined. The evidence from the College of Emergency Medicine about A and E reconfigurations, which was published in December, is being ignored and the Government persist with their plans for urgent care centres in place of emergency departments, although the case for that is clinically unproven. Emergency departments are central to the emergency care system. Instead of ignoring the views of emergency consultants and pushing polyclinics as a panacea for all ills, the Government should give emergency care the support and the structure that it needs to meet the demands that it faces in future. We will listen, not lecture. We will work with the evidence, not ignore it. We will act where the Government have drifted. I commend the motion to the House.