MINISTERS AND THE LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE

That this House deplores the absence of preventative action that should have been taken by successive Secretaries of State for Health and their departmental Ministers subsequent to receiving warnings from ambulance staff, the public, news items, a petition and debates within this House from December 1990 onwards, concerning the shortcomings of management and seriously declining standards within the London Ambulance Service before the major failure of last October; further deplores the lack of action to deal with the undisputed facts revealed in the debate of 18th April 1991 which included 10,000 cancelled patient journeys in January of that year, telephone stacking of emergency calls, redundancies of over 50 officers, lengthening response times, computer failure, and budget limits to necessary overtime and the subsequent failure of the then Secretary of State for Health, the Right honourable Member for Bristol West, to receive a deputation of London honourable Members to discuss these shortcomings; thus condemns those honourable and Right honourable Members of Her Majesty's Government who have continued to accept ill-founded assurances from various levels of their own appointees, when from January to September 1992 there were 40 death related ambulance delays; and consequently calls for the resignation of the responsible Minister.