Debate contribution: Waiting Lists: Effect on Winter Preparedness

Debate contribution by Mr Alan Chambers on 20 January 2026.

MLA: Mr Alan Chambers
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 20 January 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Waiting Lists: Effect on Winter Preparedness
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5348408

Text

Like other Members, I begin by acknowledging the very real pressures that patients and staff in our emergency departments face each and every day. Our health workers in particular also deserve our thanks, and, to be honest, they deserve better than easy sound bites and hindsight politics. The motion is long on indignation but short on responsibility. It lists pressures as though they appeared overnight and reads as though healthcare and social care are simple systems with single levers that Ministers can pull at will. It is always easy to criticise from the sidelines. The suggestion that winter pressures were "entirely foreseeable" and that no early planning took place is simply wrong. It was wrong when that claim was first made, and it is still wrong, but the Alliance Party believes that it knows more than the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) and every trust chief executive in the Province. In recent months, there have been various debates in the Chamber, and briefings have been provided to the Committee for Health. The operational actions taken have been set out in some detail, with evidence of improved performance in key areas and hard facts that some Members prefer to ignore: reductions in 12-hour delays; improved ambulance handover times in several trusts; and targeted discharge efforts that, even given the social care challenges, created real capacity at critical moments. Those gains happened not by accident but because of planning and because of people making difficult decisions in real time. I make it clear that I am not for one moment going to pretend that all is fine across our hospitals, because of course it is not. We are contacted daily about the pressures, and I am sure that MLAs' family members have had to go to accident and emergency departments. I find it particularly disappointing, however, that the Members who tabled the motion call for assurances and timelines for winter 2026, as though nothing is already under way. I thought that the Minister had been unequivocal many times in the Chamber on the point that planning for future winters is already being done. In fact, it never stops. In early December, we all watched, with some trepidation, the rapid spread of the flu, but, in reality, its rising so early and peaking so quickly helped us avoid some of the worst immediate pressures in early January. Not even the best modelling can fully predict the future, however. To demand what is already happening while accusing the Department of inaction is political theatre, not scrutiny. No one in the House has a magic wand that will instantly remove corridor care or eliminate queues in emergency departments. What we do have, however, is a responsibility to be honest with the public about the scale of the challenge and to support practical, evidence-based measures that stabilise the system while long-term reform continues. As we can see, criticism comes easily to the Alliance Party, but our health services require MLAs to show willingness to engage with complexity rather than to reduce it to mere headlines. The motion offers little acknowledgement of the progress that has been made in extremely constrained circumstances and will certainly do nothing to help the morale of workers at the coalface. The utterly reckless amendment from Mr Carroll would see patients come to harm. We do not live in an ideal world. Instead, we live in a world where the independent sector delivers a small proportion of activity overall, but it is activity that undoubtedly saves and prolongs lives each and every week. Patients and staff do not need more motions like this one. Rightly, they expect leadership and sustained efforts, yet the signatories to the motion unfortunately fail to deliver either.

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

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