Robin Walker pledges to fix ambulance queues outside Worcestershire Royal Hospital

Robin Walker, who resigned from his role as schools minister, said he now wants to focus his time on raising awareness of important issues as a backbencher.  

Mr Walker said: "I have been consistently raising awareness towards long ambulance waits and discussing what they need. 

"I don't want to see any ambulances outside the hospital and ambulances are having to wait too long at the moment." 

"I want to work towards getting Worcestershire the facilities it needs at both of the major hospitals. 

Robin Walker at Worcestershire Royal Hospital

Mr Walker said he wants to work towards expanding the hospital's capacity of patients, expand the A&E department and improve the process of patients being discharged. 

Mr Walker said: "We need to do all these things to solve the wait times of ambulances.

"There isn't a simplistic approach, you need to fix other things. 

"Improving things like the discharge process and making sure people can get the right support they need."  

Queues of Ambulances outside Worcestershire Royal Hospital

In May, Worcestershire Royal Hospital was awarded £15 million to expand the A&E department at the city's hospital after more than a decade of campaigning to secure funding.

Now that the funding has been secured it is being put towards a brand new emergency room and a dedicated pediatric department above and will be completed in February 2023. 

Mr Walker said: "As a Minister, I have been able to write to Ministers about issues and send letters and encourage them to invest, but now I'm as a backbencher again, I will be able to speak about in Parliament and raise the pressure that way."

Worcestershire Royal Hospital

Mr Walker said he was thrilled to see the A&E, which will be about a third bigger, would finally be expanding as it had been one of his top priorities since being first elected in 2010.

DELIGHTED: Worcester Robin Walker (far right) with Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Redditch MP Rachel Maclean and county hospital NHS trust chief executive Matthew Hopkins (far left)

A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We welcome any move that will lead to a reduction in hospital handover delays.

“The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly.  Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call. 

"The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients. 

“We are working incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays, looking at new ways to safely hand over patients quickly so that our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives.”