2 December, 2025
Responding to new analysis of Emergency Department (ED) waiting times by the Liberal Democrats, Dr Ian Higginson, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “Behind these figures are the stories of hundreds of thousands of people who came to our departments seeking help in their most vulnerable moment, but were ultimately let down.
“They were not let down by ED clinicians, who each day are forced to make impossible choices due to the immense pressure they are under, but rather by successive governments, including this one, whose inaction on EDs have left the system at breaking point.
“Hospital trusts must be supported to focus on getting people out of hospital when they are medically fit to do so, in order to free up capacity for the large number of people in need of admission. For this to happen, hospitals need to work more effectively, we need more staffed beds, and social care and other supporting services must be improved.
“We need politicians from across the political spectrum to open their eyes to what’s happening in Emergency Care. I fear what’s to come in the new year, when the worst of winter is expected to hit EDs, which will in turn mean even more long waits for my patients, more of whom will die as a result of this systematic failure.”