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Emergency Care

No, I will continue with the point that I was intending to raise. Just before Christmas, the pressures to which allusion has been made—I will not repeat them—meant that the London ambulance service had its busiest week in history; ambulance staff responded to 20,939 emergency incidents across the capital in the seven days up to 14 December. That was an increase of 8 per cent. on the average for the previous four weeks. The pressure was intensified by the high percentage of calls that were initially treated as category A situations. There is a growing sense of disquiet in some quarters about that fact that canny members of the public know that if they mention chest pain, an ambulance will be sent very quickly. There is a need for a retrospective review as to whether calls are being categorised correctly. No trust wants to gamble with people's lives, so perhaps this is the way we have to do things, but the system has been in place for some years and it is probably time to change it. Just after Christmas, particular problems were encountered in Hampshire. The Southern Daily Echo cited a story of a pensioner who was left waiting 70 minutes for an ambulance when she suffered a suspected broken leg, having slipped on an icy pavement. The temperature was below zero, the lady was 85 years old and, apparently, it did not require a paramedic to see that her leg was broken because it was at a fairly unnatural angle. The South Central ambulance service was unable to provide a comment at the time of the report. Only two days later, another serious incident took place. A seriously injured policeman had to be rushed to hospital in a fire engine because no ambulance was available. A special equipment unit was transformed into the makeshift ambulance because the patient needed urgent medical treatment following a crash in Southampton. A paramedic had arrived on the scene, as had a BASICS—British Association for Immediate Care—doctor, but the ambulance response was not forthcoming. There are always times when unusual demand is difficult to cover, but in an emergency a situation such as I have described is of concern. I wish to discuss BASICS doctors, because they have not been mentioned in this debate and they are an often-forgotten part of the response to major trauma. Dr. Phil Hyde, a constituent of mine, approached me—