Recent cash injections won’t solve emergency service problems, says leader

The NHS has just had its worst ever December in terms of pressure on the service, with worrying levels of staff burnout and “hideously high” bed occupancy rates in hospitals, MPs have been told.

The health service was struggling to meet demand, and recent government cash injections weren’t enough to solve longstanding problems, said Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine when he appeared before MPs on the parliamentary health and social care committee on 24 January.

The NHS was now entering a “new and more difficult phase” in the ongoing industrial dispute between trade unions and the government as strike action was intensifying, MPs were told.

Boyle, who was giving evidence to the committee’s inquiry into the situation in emergency departments, waiting times, and excess deaths, emphasised the severity of the situation. …