Labour accuses Government of 'sleepwalking into crisis' over NHS beds

It has also been revealed that hospital car parking charges raised £175m last year

The bed occupancy rate in the NHS is regularly above its ‘safe occupancy rate’ of 85 per cent (PA)

The NHS is facing a crisis over the number of available ward beds, according to analysis by the Labour Party.

Official figures show that in the last year, 90 per cent of hospital beds were listed as “occupied”, which is higher than at any point under the Conservative or coalition governments, and far above the “safe occupancy rate” of 85 per cent.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “We do not set standards or targets for bed occupancy as we recognise that all hospitals operate differently and we expect them to manage their beds in way that works best for local patients’ needs.”

Meanwhile, a Freedom of Information (FoI) request revealed that hospital car parking charges generated £175m last year.

Labour claimed that 46,993 patients have been stuck in the back of ambulances for over 30 minutes already this winter, with 9,775 having to wait longer than one hour to find a bed.

Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth said the problem is likely to get worse.

“For a Government which prides itself on patient safety, these shocking bed occupancy figures stand as a damning indictment of Theresa May’s failure to properly run our NHS,” he told Politics Home.

“It is completely unacceptable that the 85 per cent bed occupancy target for general and acute hospital services has been missed every quarter for more than seven years, resulting in patient safety being compromised on a regular basis.

“Winter is already underway and it’s evident that this Government is sleepwalking into crisis. This shambles cannot continue.”

NHS hospitals made £175m by charging patients, visitors and staff to park in 2016/17, a 6 per cent increase on the previous year.

Even Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called the parking charges at hospitals a “stealth tax” but an FoI request has shown that as many as two thirds of NHS hospitals raise more than £1m a year through doing so. More than half of NHS trusts charge for disabled parking.

The Government has previously condemned “complex and unfair” parking charges and called for reform.

In Scotland and Wales, where healthcare is a devolved matter, hospital car parks are almost all free.

Hospital car parking charges have been defended as crucial to patient care, though some NHS Trusts have employed private firms to manage the car parks, who are making hundreds of thousands of pounds of profit from them.

Royal Surrey County hospital, in Guildford, was found to be the most expensive, charging £4 per hour.

Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “For patients, parking charges amount to an extra charge for being ill. The increase in the number of trusts who are charging for disabled parking is particularly concerning.

“Patients who require disabled parking may have little choice but to access their care by car, and may need to do so often. Targeting them in this way feels rather cynical.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “Patients and families should not have to deal with the added stress of complex and unfair parking charges. NHS organisations are locally responsible for the methods used to charge, and we want to see them coming up with flexible options that put patients and their families first.”