Yvette Cooper said there would be new standards for caring for children in A&E in England, with figures on corridor care collected by age for the first time. She was speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, which highlighted the case of two-year-old Finlay Roberts, who died in 2024 after spending hours in an A&E corridor in north London before being discharged.
Finlay's father, David Roberts, told the BBC the situation was "a terrible mess", describing how the family was moved into a room with a bed before being moved back into the corridor. "He just clung to me, as we now know, slowly dying," he said. His mother, Liz Roberts, said corridor care "robs people of their dignity when they are at their most vulnerable", and recalled being told to administer a suppository to her son in the corridor.
Cooper apologised to the family on behalf of the NHS. "No child should be treated in a corridor. No patient should be treated in a corridor," she said.
The Whittington Health NHS Trust, where the events took place, extended its condolences to the family. It said it continued to experience periods of exceptional demand across emergency care and that at times some patients might receive care in temporary clinical areas, including corridors. "Our staff work tirelessly to provide safe and compassionate care in extremely challenging conditions," it said.
The government had already pledged to end corridor care for all patients by the end of this parliament. Cooper said eradicating it for children would now be prioritised. Corridor care refers to patients being treated or waiting in corridors, waiting rooms or other hospital areas because of a lack of appropriate space.
The £140m will go towards 14 schemes across England, including new urgent care centres, ambulance fleets and upgrades to emergency departments. It follows almost 7.3 million A&E attendances between June and August, the highest ever figure for a summer period, and comes as the latest figures show an estimated 7.37 million treatments waiting to be carried out at the end of August, relating to 6.24 million patients.
Shadow health secretary Damian Hinds said the government needed to act, but asked it to explain where the money was coming from. Health thinktank the King's Fund warned the service faced a "twin crisis" going into winter, with little time between peak periods for staff and the system to recover. NHS medical director Prof Frankie Swords said earlier this month there were "ominous" signs of winter pressure, with more patients arriving at A&E with flu and other respiratory viruses than usual for this time of year.
Health groups including Age UK, Marie Curie and the Royal College of Nursing wrote to Cooper on Friday saying corridor care was fundamentally incompatible with NHS care standards and would require "whole-system action" to eradicate. RCN England executive director Patricia Marquis said the extra money was welcome but would provide "just another sticking plaster on a system that is at breaking point". "The nursing workforce needed to deliver these services goes into winter already running on empty and short of staff," she said.
Cooper was also asked whether the government would meet its manifesto pledge that 92% of patients start treatment within 18 weeks of booking a hospital appointment by 2029. "That remains our manifesto commitment and of course we're going to keep working towards it," she said. Pressed on whether the target was achievable, she replied: "The whole point about having the targets is about having something stretching that we work towards." The target has not been met for more than a decade.