Patient stories in Parliament reinforce scale of Shropshire A&E corridor crisis
Shocking stories of corridor care at Shropshire’s A&E departments were highlighted in Parliament on Tuesday (13th January) as figures make 2025 the worst year for 12-hour waits.
North Shropshire MP, Helen Morgan, shared the experiences of patients using the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital A&E and the Princess Royal Hospital A&E in Telford, as the true scale of the crisis was revealed in the new data.
The stark NHS figures show 2025 as the worst year on record as thousands of patients waited more than 12 hours. The Shrewsbury & Telford NHS Hospital Trust was third worst in the country for 12-hour A&E waits in October.
Of the 11,220 patients seen at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital A&Es, almost a quarter (2,595) waited more than 12 hours to be seen.
Helen, the Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson, joined colleagues in calling for a government guarantee that no patient would wait more than 12 hours in A&E.
In Parliament, Helen highlighted the shocking cases of several North Shropshire patients suffering in pain while waiting to be seen. She said they all wanted to share their experiences “so others don’t have to suffer like they did, in pain for hours and hours”.
Helen said: “The experiences of these patients are horrendous, but sadly not isolated. Staff in Shropshire are working extremely hard, but the Government needs to do much more to fix the crisis in emergency care.”
The patients were:
Candice, from Market Drayton, who was interrupted while changing her stoma bag behind a curtain on the emergency ward;
Lynne, from Trefonen, waited 17 hours for an ambulance after breaking several ribs. On arrival at A&E her ambulance was one of 21 waiting outside. She spent seven hours outside in the ambulance;
Sandra, from Oswestry, who has bladder cancer and spent 31 hours waiting with all but two of these on a chair in the ‘fit to sit’ area. She says she feels let down by an NHS she has paid into for 50 years.
Helen spoke after Liberal Democrat Leader, Ed Davey, set out a £1.5bn plan to end 12-hour A&E waits within a year and tackle the scandal of patients being treated in hospital corridors.
In his speech, Ed Davey highlighted Sandra’s case and said: “What more stark an example could there be, of the way things in our country aren’t working the way they should, than thousands of people lying for hours in corridors in our hospitals, and people dying on those trolleys?
“This deadly corridor crisis isn’t befitting of the heroic doctors, nurses and other health professionals who work in our NHS. It’s not what we expect from our NHS, and it’s not what we pay our hard-earned money in taxes to fund our NHS for.”
Ed warned that “18 months of Labour failure” had worsened the NHS crisis left by the Conservatives.
Helen added: “The figures are shocking and while this is a national scandal, clearly there is a lot more to do in Shropshire to give patients the care they expect, and deserve.”
