Chamber and committees

It is 6.2 per cent.

On sickness, anyone who speaks to people who work in the NHS will tell you that they are super stressed. In the past couple of weeks, campaigning members of the Parliament have had the luxury of chapping on people’s doors, probably much to their annoyance. Frequently, we have heard that many NHS staff are considering leaving the profession altogether. Absence due to stress and long-term health issues seems to be a problem. I appreciate that people get acutely sick—we all get sick, including NHS staff—and some people get Covid. However, I want to understand the underlying absence levels due to long-term illness. What is the trajectory on those? What are you doing to support people who work in our NHS?

Here is the problem: the situation that I found myself in was not an accident or, indeed, an emergency. Many people will present at hospital simply because there is no other option available to them, and that is adding a huge amount of pressure to our accident and emergency departments.

There is a situation, when someone has taken unwell, that falls outside a regular GP visit or appointment but in relation to which, between 3 minutes past 8 in the morning and 8 o’clock the following morning, there is simply no option other than to spend three hours on the phone to 111 and not achieve anything, or to turn up at hospital. That is my point. The system feels broken, and there are thousands of people out there who feel the same way.

Are we looking at this in the right way? Is there any fresh or blue-sky thinking about how we deal with people who want to speak to a clinician as quickly as possible but do not want to burden the hospital system and absolutely cannot get an appointment with their GP, sometimes for weeks on end? There has to be a middle ground somewhere, and it does not sound as though there is one.

Where are we at with A and E at the moment? There has been a lot of discussion recently about how long people have to wait once they get to A and E. There is a four-hour waiting time target, which I believe means that 95 per cent of people should be admitted, discharged or transferred for treatment within four hours of presenting. What is the current statistic?

That is so way off target. You are 30 percentage points off the target. What is going wrong?

I can tell you that, anecdotally, when I speak to care homes, workforce is the issue, and getting staff is part of the problem.

On people, which is my final topic, where are we at with head count? Let us look at three statistics. First, let us look at the total head count in the NHS now in comparison with the number in the past couple of years. Just to give you a heads up, secondly, I will ask about the sickness absence rates in the workforce and, thirdly, I will look at turnover rates. What statistics do you have to share with us on those three issues?

It has dropped since September 2023, when it was sitting at above 70 per cent, and it has dropped considerably since September 2018, when it was 92 per cent—in fact, you almost made the target. However, we are now saying that two in three people will not be seen within four hours. Is that right?

Do not worry—I am coming to that.

Can I stop you there for a second? I am still trying to get my head around this. According to what you have just said, there are two reasons why we are so far under the target. Overall, you said that there were three points, but the first one is a positive—the number of emergency admissions is going down, which is good news. However, the other two points are not positives. You are saying that the age profile of people and the fact that they stay in hospital a little bit longer than they used to are the reasons why so many people are sitting in accident and emergency for eight or nine hours. I do not see the link. Please explain it to me.

I have a final question. How much is being spent on agency staff?