Health Secretary conference speech misses ‘elephant in the room’ of corridor care

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The Health Secretary, speaking at the Labour conference in Liverpool, said that thanks to Unison campaigning, her party’s social care plans “will go further because it is just wrong that the people who work hardest to help others maintain dignity and respect in old age too often get nothing back from retirement themselves.”

Unison head of social care Gavin Edwards said: “Care workers spend their working lives giving support to others, yet all too often face uncertainty in their own later years.”

GMB national officer Natalie Grayson described the news as “long overdue,” adding: “This pension pot, along with the fair pay agreements, show this a government that is finally working to address the poverty pay that has blighted the care sector for years.”

Ms Cooper also hit back at previous criticism of her focus on maternity services, confirming that an independent maternity and neonatal commissioner will be appointed later this year.

Samantha Wathen of Keep Our NHS Public welcomed the “important announcement on improving maternity care” but said the Health Secretary’s speech had failed to address “the elephant in the room [which] is the continuing and ever-worsening crisis in emergency care.”

“According to figures from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, around 300 people are dying avoidably every week in the emergency care pathway,” she added.

“Corridor care has become a dangerous, year-round reality in hospitals up and down the country.

“The government cannot talk seriously about patient safety while accepting corridor care as a normalised way of running the NHS.”

Socialist Health Association chairwoman Rathi Guhadasan highlighted that Ms Cooper’s speech had also not mentioned NHS outsourcing, private finance or public private partnerships, how the government would deal with waiting lists in a timely manner and the “horrendous emergency care crisis.”

She added: “Surely this is a national emergency that needs an urgent solution.”