Health Secretary Yvette Cooper apologised to Finlay Roberts’s parents for their ‘unimaginable’ experience after their two-year-old son died after nine hours in a hospital corridor
Yvette Cooper has committed to ending corridor care for children sooner than the end of Parliament after the tragic case of Finlay Roberts.
The Health Secretary apologised to Finlay’s parents for their “unimaginable” experience after their two-year-old son died after nine hours in a hospital corridor. The toddler was taken to the Whittington Hospital in north London in July 2024 with a tummy ache and medics failed to identify he had a twisted bowel.
In a clip played on BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show, Finlay’s mum Liz Roberts said corridor care “robs people of their dignity”, while dad David Roberts added: “If this doesn’t induce a moment of pause and reflection, and induce or catalyse some kind of a realisation of the scale of the change.”
After watching the emotional interview, Ms Cooper told the show: “I’d first just apologise to Finlay’s parents for what they’ve had to go through on behalf of the NHS. It’s just unimaginable that for parents to have to go through what they’ve been through, and look, no child should be treated in a corridor. No patient should be treated in a corridor.”
She continued: “I’ve also asked the NHS England chief executive to now have urgent new standards drawn up for how children should be treated in A&E, including an urgent plan to eliminate corridor care for children as a priority. We’ve got a plan for the whole of the Parliament to end corridor care more broadly, but then also to prioritise that and to do so urgently for children.”
Corridor care became widespread in the NHS after the Covid-19 pandemic and sees patients treated in non-clinical spaces such as corridors, offices and walk-in cupboards. This summer, the Government brought in measures to properly track the practice amid a lack of data on how widespread it is.
Ms Cooper vowed to boost data collection, admitting that children aren’t being properly tracked. “It wasn’t measured in the NHS so that is something this government has introduced,” she said. “But it’s not measured by age, so I have insisted we have now the new figures to come in to look at children, whether children are being treated in corridors.”
Mr Roberts described his son’s treatment as a “terrible mess”, telling the BBC: “It was just a terrible mess. So occasionally, for I think literal minutes at a time, we were moved into a cubicle, onto a bed, but then moved back out into the corridor, and we just sat there. And again, he just kind of clung for me, as we now know, slowly dying.”
Asked for his message to Ms Cooper, he said: “What will it take? We’ve seen examples of adults waiting in corridors, you know, 20, 30, hours, and we seem to sort of ultimately normalise this. We have our children in the corridors, in escalating numbers, and if this doesn’t induce a moment of pause and reflection, and induce or catalyse some kind of a realisation of the scale of change, nothing will.”
Ms Roberts continued: “The corridor care, I mean, I think for us, it just embodies so much, so much of what went wrong… It robs people of their dignity when they’re at their most vulnerable, and for that to be happening to children. In Finlay’s case, there was at one point in the evening while we were sitting on the chair, where I was given a suppository to administer to him, and I gave him that. I administered that to him while sitting on that chair in that understaffed, overcrowded department, and so the reality that is that, you know, I had to remove his nappy in a public space to give him medicine that he needed because there was no option.
A spokesperson from Whittington Hospital previously said: “Our staff work tirelessly to provide safe and compassionate care in extremely challenging conditions, and we continue to take all possible steps to improve patient flow, increase capacity and reduce the need for care to be delivered in these environments. The trust extends its sincere condolences to Finlay’s family.”