Debate contribution: Waiting Lists: Action Plan

Debate contribution by Mr Alan Robinson on 20 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Alan Robinson

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

20 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Waiting Lists: Action Plan

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4380654

Read the official Assembly record

Text

That this is my maiden speech allows me to speak a little from a very personal perspective. It allows me to express my frustrations, as someone with long-standing health conditions who has been on multiple waiting lists and who has just recently been put on yet another. Today, we will all be able to share stories of constituents who have visited our offices seeking assistance in the hope of climbing a lengthy waiting list. All of us can give accounts of people whom we represent who have no other option but to part with their life savings or to borrow many thousands of pounds for urgent treatment, forcing themselves into a world of debt. These are good, decent, salt-of-the-earth people who may have worked themselves to the bone all their days and paid into the NHS only to be let down. I mean this with the greatest of respect, but, while they part with money that they can ill afford, others cannot do that. Those people descend into greater ill health, which, ultimately, becomes more complex and expensive to treat. Some even die. That is the stark reality that we are dealing with. While we could all fill today's business with examples of human suffering, we must also deal in the hard facts. We heard earlier that, as of September 2023, 429,000 people were waiting on a first outpatient appointment, of which half were waiting for a year. Some of those people will die; at best, their quality of life will be poor. Those waiting times are the worst in the UK and amongst the poorest outcomes in Western Europe. We also heard earlier that one quarter of all cancer diagnoses between 2012 and 2017 were made in emergency departments (EDs). A postcode lottery is being played out in cancer treatment waiting times, with the Western Trust seeing much better performance towards meeting targets than other areas. I could go on and on, but I simply do not have the time. When it met last week, the new Health Committee heard the stark reality that we all must bear. The £34 million from the British Government to tackle waiting lists is nowhere near enough. Indeed, it would take hundreds of millions of pounds and many years to properly address the situation. Those are not my words, but those of senior health officials. That brings me to my personal experience with one such waiting list on which I was placed several years back, when my GP initially told me that I would have an 18-month wait. Eighteen months came and went, then 19 months, 20 months and 21 months. When I became aware that the consultant also carried out work in the private sector, I queried, merely out of interest, how soon I could be seen. The answer from the consultant's PA was, "Can you attend next Thursday?". The take-home message for me was that the wealthy can stay healthy while the rest of us just have to wait. The right to health should belong to everyone. It also showed me that the capacity in the private sector should be grasped. The use of private hospitals and providers across the British Isles and further afield is critical and looks like the only short-term option. This should not be focused just on surgery but on the full suite of professional skills and services needed to reduce the current backlog. I accept that there have been gains in recent times with the ongoing development of dedicated elective sites, including regional day case and overnight stay centres. However, significant further expansion is required if we are to see better progress in dealing with waiting list backlogs. We must maximise outcomes from additional investment. Continuing with the same level of small contracts with independent providers cannot deliver the tangible progress that we crave. The Department of Health must be seizing opportunities to —

— forge larger national and local partnerships with the NHS in other parts of the UK and independent providers to crack down on waiting lists.

We owe it to the thousands upon thousands of our constituents —.

685 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:38 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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