BBC Question Time audience members expressed their anger and disappointment over the NHS crisis as they shared their ordeal with a Conservative MP on the show yesterday. Several NHS staff members slammed Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government for not accepting the crisis that has gripped the country over the last few weeks.
An emergency nurse practitioner, who has been qualified for four years, said: “I have been on the frontline prior to the pandemic, during it, and post-pandemic.
“I want to put it bluntly that it’s like a warzone.
“There are beds everywhere, patients everywhere. There is elderly people who is sitting on chairs for 24 hours. It’s not okay anymore.
“It needs to be addressed now.
“In 2019, there was a manifesto pledge that there will be 40 new hospitals, that hasn’t even been done, remotely even looked into.
“Where are they going to find the staff to staff those because they can’t retain the staff as they don’t know how to look after them?
“All we get nowadays is ‘we are not skilled enough. We need to justify the pay rise’.
I think we have justified enough. We are tired and we have had enough”
Junior doctor Navreen Phugura, working with the NHS as a frontline worker, explained how her own family member had to face a tough time due to the long waiting hours.
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Tory Junior Minister Alex Chalk backed Mr Sunak’s plan to address NHS waiting times.
The Cheltenham MP said: “He recognises it is immensely serious because when he did a speech at the beginning of the year, he named getting down the waiting list as one of his absolute priorities.
“Last weekend, he was there meeting with the NHS. I think the pressures are absolutely extraordinary.
“But what he been absolutely clear about is to get the waiting list down under two years to 18 months by the spring and, by next spring, down to 12 months.
“What he said, I think this is really refreshing, is that ‘Here I stand, this is the target, this is what I want to be judged on, and if I don’t, then you please judge me’, and I think that’s absolutely the right approach.”
