Last week I spoke in the House twice about the state of the NHS and the chaos in Accident and Emergency Departments across the country. On Monday Stephen Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, denied that the Government’s actions were too little, too late and claimed that they had built a new hospital in Aintree as they had at Royal Liverpool. On Wednesday he didn’t even have the courtesy to stay in the debate to listen to MPs contributions, leaving at his earliest opportunity after two responses to his statement.

This came after I heard from a constituent who emailed me at 430am last Sunday morning, desperate to get help for her Dad who had been taken into Aintree A&E with a suspected stroke on the Friday. At this stage he had been sat on a hard chair for over 30 hours. He was given a bed after 54 hours, sleeping in the waiting room in the meantime. He didn’t receive an MRI scan necessary to diagnose whether he’d had a stroke until 78 hours later, which is totally unacceptable. He isn’t alone in this type of experience.

The Tories are blaming anyone and anything they can, but this is a disaster happening on their watch. When I was a Junior Minister in the last Labour Government we began planning for winter pressures in the summer. The Conservatives have waited until January and Stephen Barclay is now desperately trying to shift the blame for their negligence. I don’t know what planet he lives on but he seems to be out of touch with the reality of the NHS in Liverpool.