Most of us have experienced first-hand the excellent care given by Kings

College Hospital.  Kings has one of the busiest and best A&E departments in

London. And they do an excellent job with the resources they have. But the

challenges it faces are significant. The cracks are beginning to show and the

problems that we feared are beginning to become very clear.

I’m extremely concerned by the latest figures on A&E waiting times. In December 2014,

11% of people attending A&E waited more than 4 hours before being admitted or

discharged. Since the 1st January 2015 this has risen to 15%.

 
With people finding it harder to get to see their GP and home care services for

the elderly over stretched, more people go to A&E. And the stretch on home

care services means that some elderly patients stay longer in hospital than they

need or want. And that means queues build up as patients in A&E can’t be

found a bed.

 
The NHS is not safe in the Tories’ hands. Over the years I’ve fought hard

alongside my South London colleagues for Kings to be improved, not be pulled

back. My worry is that with the Tories and Lib Dems wasting billions of

pounds on NHS reorganisation, we are slipping back to the dark days before

Labour invested in hospitals like Kings to modernise the NHS and raise

standards.

 
The next Labour government will rescue the NHS with a £2.5 billion a year ‘Time to Care’

fund - on top of Tory spending plans - to fund new staff, including 8,000 more GPs. We will

also guarantee a GP appointment within 48 hours or on the same day if you need it.

 
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