Comment: The COVID Inquiry's Findings Must Be a Turning Point for Our NHS

Six years on from the pandemic, the publication of the COVID Inquiry's most recent report last week made for devastating reading. The inquiry has confirmed what many of us already suspected: that the NHS only just coped, that patients were harmed, that staff worked in conditions described as war zones, and that our health service was ill-prepared for dealing with a pandemic. 

What is perhaps most startling is that the report concluded, if the NHS barely coped six years ago, it would not cope at all were we to experience a pandemic today. 

Six years on from the pandemic, the COVID Inquiry's findings make one thing clear: our NHS needs proper investment. Jess Brown-Fuller is calling on the government to deliver it.

Stories of corridor care and long A&E waits continue to feature regularly in my inbox, and in an area where more than one in four residents is aged 65 or over, the pressure on our services is acute and growing. Waiting lists remain high and NHS staff are doing their best in impossible circumstances, but patients need assurances they will get prompt and dignified care.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a legal guarantee that no patient should wait more than 12 hours in A&E, alongside a legal right to see a GP within 7 days, and 24 hours if it is urgent. 

But fundamentally, we must fix our broken social care system. You cannot fix the NHS without fixing social care. Last December, an average of nearly 13,000 patients were occupying hospital beds each day that they no longer clinically needed - this represents roughly one in ten general and acute beds in England. Overwhelmed hospitals are a symptom of a crisis that successive governments have chosen to defer, and this must end now. We were delighted when the government agreed to cross-party talks to address the social care crisis, but so far there has only been one meeting and progress has stalled. 

If the government was to properly invest in the front door and the back door of the health service, the pressure in the acute is relieved. If patients could get a timely GP appointment or see a dentist, they wouldn’t end up presenting in A&E. Similarly, if they could convalesce in the comfort of their own home with an appropriate care package, they would improve much faster. 

There are reasons for local optimism: the new Same Day Emergency Care Unit at St Richard's is a welcome development, and the Acute Stroke Centre due to open by 2027 will be transformative for West Sussex. It is reassuring to see investment in what is a much needed hospital locally. But far more needs to be done to build resilience and capacity to avert the catastrophes we saw during the Pandemic. The people of this constituency deserve to know that lessons have genuinely been learned, and I will continue to press for that in Parliament.