Ed Davey warns Labour ministers are fighting over keys to number 10 instead of fixing NHS crisis

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Today (13th January), Ed Davey will hold a press conference where he will outline his vision to end 12 hour A&E waits within a year and tackle the scandal of patients being treated in hospital corridors. The Liberal Democrat Leader will warn that Labour ministers are too busy fighting over the keys to number 10 to fix the NHS crisis.

This comes as figures analysed by the Liberal Democrats show record numbers of A&Es becoming so overwhelmed they have to send patients to other hospitals. The number of these A&E diverts/evacuations in winter 2025-6 so far is more than double the figure just two years ago.

In his speech, Davey will 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. He will also call for a new law to enshrine the right for patients to be seen in A&E within 12 hours, warning that “18 months of Labour failure” has worsened the NHS crisis left by the Conservatives.

Please see full speech below, check against delivery

Thank you Anthony. Thank you for everything you’re doing serving your community in our National Health Service.

And thank you for sharing your experience on the frontline of this crisis.

It’s really important – because make no mistake: this is a national crisis.

Helen Morgan – our brilliant Health Spokesperson – was telling me earlier about a constituent of hers called Sandra.

Sandra is 71. She has bladder cancer.

Two weeks ago she became really unwell. Her legs were giving way.

Her family took her into Shrewsbury A&E after being told no ambulance was coming.

Sandra was there for 31 hours before she even got a bed. Two hours on a trolley, the rest sitting in a chair.

31 hours. For a 71 year-old with bladder cancer.

And Sandra isn’t alone.

Right now, in the corridors of A&E departments across the country, there are thousands of people – sick or injured – lying on trolleys or waiting on plastic chairs.

Many of them have been there for hours.

Waiting to be seen. Waiting to be treated. Waiting to be admitted to a hospital ward.

No privacy. No dignity. Some have been left to soil themselves because there’s no one to help.

There have even been tragic cases of people dying on those trolleys and left undiscovered for hours.

The numbers are staggering.

Every week, more than 30,000 patients are stuck in A&E for over 12 hours.

And those long waits can be deadly. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has estimated that those 12-hour waits led to more than 16,000 extra deaths in 2024 alone.

Every single day, people are dying because of the shocking corridor crisis in our hospitals.

And it didn’t used to be like this. Not so long ago, ministers talked about 4-hour waits in A&E.

I disagreed with Tony Blair on a lot of things, but he knew those waits were unacceptable and to his credit, his Labour government brought them down.

Not so long ago, the idea of waiting over 12 hours in A&E was almost unthinkable.

Just look at this graph. It’s shocking.

In November 2015, just 29 patients waited more than 12 hours between a decision to admit them and actually being admitted.

That’s 29 patients too many, to be sure. But under the last Conservative government, those numbers sky-rocketed.

So in November 2025, instead of 29, it was over 50,000.

Now, some of that is down to Covid, of course.

We remember all too well the enormous strain it put on our hospitals, and it’s no surprise that those numbers rose dramatically during the pandemic.

But what’s truly shocking is what happened afterwards.

The numbers didn’t go down. They didn’t even flatline. They’ve kept on going up and up.

18 months into this Labour government, and it still isn’t getting any better.

So in 2025, more patients waited twelve hours to be admitted than in any year of the pandemic – or in any year in the history of our NHS.

That is a national scandal. And it has to end.

Because 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? People dying on those trolleys?

In the National Health Service. The NHS – one of the United Kingdom’s greatest inventions. One of the things that makes us proudest to be British.

It used to be the envy of the world. And we need to make it the jewel in our crown once more.

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.

So no wonder people are angry, when this is the treatment they get.

When they have to wait for hours in pain and distress, or see their loved one crammed in on a trolley somewhere – not getting the care that they need.

No wonder people were so furious with the Conservative Party for plunging the NHS into this crisis.

And no wonder they are so fed up with Labour for not only failing to fix it – but actually letting things get worse on their watch.

No wonder people look at how badly both those parties have let them down, and think politics just doesn’t work for them.

No wonder people want change. Real change.

And that’s why I’m talking to you about this today. Because if we don’t show that we can change things – if we can’t fix this crisis – that’s when the populists and the extremists will take advantage.

Not because they can fix it. Of course they can’t. They’re not even interested in fixing it.

But because populists feed off disillusionment. They thrive when people simply don’t believe that any government, of any party, can really make their lives better.

So we have to show we can. We have to offer hope.

And only the Liberal Democrats can do that.

The Conservatives can’t. They caused this crisis in the first place – and they have literally nothing to say about it now.

Sadly, Labour have shown they can’t either. And now they’re too busy fighting over the keys to Number 10 to fix our NHS.

And Reform? Don’t make me laugh.

Nigel Farage doesn’t care about the NHS. He still hasn’t mentioned it once in the House of Commons. Although he’s not actually there that often, so that might be why.

He hasn’t said the word “hospitals” once.

But we know what he wants to do, don’t we? We know what his plan is, even if he’s now too smart to say it out loud.

He wants to privatise the NHS. Replace it with an American-style insurance system.

A system where, every year in the US, almost half a million people go bankrupt because of their medical bills.

That is Trump’s America, don’t let it become Farage’s Britain.

So yes, only the Liberal Democrats are facing up to this emergency care crisis.

Not only in England – after years of Conservative neglect, and now Labour’s failure.

But also in Scotland under the SNP and Wales under Labour. Where their governments have plunged the NHS into crisis too.

Only the Liberal Democrats are offering real solutions.

That starts with being clear about what’s causing the problem.

Too many people are being forced to go into A&E in the first place, because they can’t see a GP in their community.

That’s why we’ve put forward a fully-costed plan to guarantee everyone a GP appointment within seven days, or within 24 hours if it’s urgent.

We campaigned on it at the last election, and we are still pressing the government to adopt it now.

And then too many people are stuck in hospital, long after they are well enough to leave.

Right now, there are more than 12,000 people stuck in hospital beds – well enough to be discharged, but without the care in place for them to leave.

GPs and care. Crucial parts of the solution – but both areas that Labour have badly neglected.

They’ve hit GP practices with the National Insurance hike, and we now have the absurd situation where GP registrars can’t find a job when they finish their training.

And on care – Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting have simply decided to put it in the “too difficult” box and not even try to fix it for another decade.

So, today, I am announcing a new plan to invest in our hospitals, in social care and in supporting family carers –

To help get people out of hospital more quickly, and help keep them out of hospital safely –

Through a combination of reserving places in care homes, funding more care packages for people after they leave hospital, and supporting family carers properly to look after their loved ones at home.

Like helping carers to make sure their loved ones are taking the right dose of their medicines after they leave hospital –

Something that has been proven to help stop people going back into hospital – and save the NHS money.

A really obvious thing to do if ministers actually thought about carers and valued them properly.

Altogether, our package would make six thousand extra hospital beds available – to finally end the corridor crisis in A&E this year.

And before you ask – it is fully costed, and fully funded.

How? By scrapping the government’s plan to hand an extra £3 billion a year to pharmaceutical giants, just to appease Donald Trump.

That is a terrible deal for Britain, a terrible deal for taxpayers and a terrible deal for our NHS.

The government should finally stand up to Trump, reject his demands and invest that money in hospitals and in care.

To pull our NHS out of this crisis and make it the incredible, world-beating Health Service we all know it can be.

With the package we are calling for today, the government could put an end to 12-hour A&E waits altogether.

It could do it by the end of the year – so that this is the last winter we see a corridor crisis like this.

And so we are also calling for a new law to end 12-hour waits, enshrined in the NHS Constitution, and a legal duty on the Health Secretary to deliver it.

Not just vague promises. Action. And accountability.

Never again should a single person have to watch their loved one die on a trolley in a hospital corridor. Never again.

That is the kind of real change our country needs. And that is the kind of change the Liberal Democrats will keep fighting for.

Thank you.

ENDS

Notes to Editor:

A&E divert is defined by NHS as  periods during which there was an agreed temporary divert of patients to other A&E departments to provide temporary respite (i.e. not to meet a clinical need).

Data on A&E diverts can be found here.