Ministers in denial over extent of A&E crisis, says Royal College of Emergency Medicine – UK politics live

Latest updates: RCEM vice president says there has been ‘remarkable’ lack of engagement with political leaders over issues in emergency care

My opening diatribe about the terrible state of public services in the UK may have been over-generous to Boris Johnson, Mysticnick argues in the comments below the line. I said Johnson may be right about Britain being a good place to go to the pub. (See 9.35am.) But Mysticnick points out that, in the third quarter of last year, pubs in England and Wales were closing at the rate of 50 a month.

At the weekend Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that between 300 and 500 people were dying every week because of delays in A&E. Today his RCEM colleague Dr Ian Higginson, the college’s vice-president, claimed ministers were in denial over the extent of the problem. He told Times Radio:

There’s been a remarkable lack of what I would call meaningful engagement for quite some time from many political leaders. And what we tend to hear trotted out is the same old stuff rather than any acceptance that what myself on behalf of my colleagues within emergency medicine, what other colleagues in other parts of the health service are saying, is real.

There seems to be almost a battle of machismo and denial going on. And this is a real problem for the NHS. [If we get] ourselves into a situation where the staff are trying to say how it is on the front line, and the organisations and political leaders who have the power and the ability to make change are simply trying to push back and for whatever motivation not accept that, there’s a real problem.