Labour's Jess Phillips live-tweets dad's A&E experience revealling bleak state of NHS

The waiting times for emergency services have been the topic of discussion in politics recently, as wait times for ambulances and treatment in A&E have revealed how stretched the NHS is.

Labour MP Jess Phillips has shown just how desperate the situation is after she began live-tweeting her family’s experience of trying to get her sick father emergency treatment.

On the evening of 9 November, Phillips explained in a tweet that her father had fallen ill and at 10 am that morning the NHS’s 111 services had advised he needed to be seen by a paramedic and would send an ambulance.

Phillips explained the ambulance never arrived so the family took him to A&E themselves and faced a very long wait to be seen. Phillips suggested the NHS decline is down to the previous twelve years of Tory rule.

At around 9 PM, Phillips tweeted: “My dad is ill, my brother called 111 at 10am. They said he needed a paramedic and would send an ambulance. It never came.

“I got back from London in my car this evening, I drove because I simply cannot rely on trains anymore in the UK. We are now in A&E. #12YearsofTory.”

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In another update given at around 2:30 AM, Phillips revealed she and her father were still in A&E, adding that the staff there were “lovely but so overwhelmed”.

At 9 AM this morning, Phillips updated again saying they were still in A&E. She also responded to a Twitter user who asked why she had time to go on Twitter and be “political” while her dad was ill.

Phillips responded, writing: “Oh I've got time, so far 14 hours of time. Politics is personal. It feels very very personal right now.”

In her final update on the A&E visit, Phillips confirmed that her father had spent 17 hours there and thanked staff at the hospital for their hard work under difficult circumstances.

The experience of Phillips’ father comes as it was reported that last month the number of twelve-hour waits in A&E departments in England exceeded 40,000 for the first time ever.

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