Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has told the BBC that the NHS must take urgent action to stop children being treated in hospital corridors, describing it as a priority and asking NHS England to draw up urgent plans to eliminate "corridor care" for children and introduce new standards for how children are treated at A&E. That this needed to be formally requested, rather than simply assumed, is the kind of detail that tells you everything about the state of things.
Cooper made the commitment on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, following a letter from more than a dozen health groups urging her to act. The numbers behind the urgency: 50,582 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E departments from a decision to admit to actually being admitted in September, up from 44,951 in August. Cooper said the way this data is collected will be changed so that the number of children is included in the figures - a useful innovation, in the sense that counting a problem is generally a prerequisite for fixing it.
"I'm clear that child health needs to be a much greater priority for the NHS," Cooper said. The government, she added, aims to end corridor care more broadly by the end of this parliament - a goal that sounds ambitious mostly because the baseline is so grim.
Kuenssberg raised the case of Finlay Roberts, a two-year-old boy who died in 2024 after spending the final hours of his life in a crowded A&E corridor. Finlay's father, David Roberts, described the situation as a "terrible mess," recalling how the family was briefly moved into a room with a bed before being moved back into the corridor. "He just clung to me, as we now know, slowly dying," he said. Finlay's mother, Liz Roberts, said corridor care "robs people of their dignity when they are at their most vulnerable," and recalled being told to administer a suppository to Finlay in the corridor because there was no other option.
After hearing their story, Cooper apologised to Finlay's parents on behalf of the NHS. "No child should be treated in a corridor. No patient should be treated in a corridor," she said - a sentence that, in a functioning system, would be less of a policy announcement and more of a tautology. The Whittington Health NHS Trust, where the incident occurred, extended its condolences to Finlay's family and said it continues to experience periods of exceptional demand across emergency care, with some patients at times receiving care in temporary clinical areas, including corridors. "Our staff work tirelessly to provide safe and compassionate care in extremely challenging conditions," the trust said.
On Friday, 16 health groups - including Age UK, Marie Curie and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) - sent Cooper a letter urging action, calling corridor care fundamentally incompatible with NHS care standards and saying eradicating it would require "whole-system action."
Before her Kuenssberg appearance, Cooper warned the NHS faces a more challenging winter than normal, following multiple heatwaves that produced its busiest summer on record in England. She announced £140m in funding to boost urgent care capacity against seasonal illnesses including flu and norovirus. The money will go toward 14 schemes across England, including new urgent care centres, ambulance fleets and upgrades to emergency departments. Shadow health secretary Damian Hinds said the government needed to act but asked where the money was coming from, while RCN England dismissed the funding as "just another sticking plaster."
"Winter will be more challenging for our NHS this year, after such a heavy summer," Cooper said in a statement. "That's why we have been preparing early and investing in extra urgent care capacity to help get patients the care they need." According to NHS data, almost 7.3 million people attended A&E in England between June and August - the highest figure ever recorded for a summer period. The King's Fund thinktank warned the service faces a "twin crisis" going into winter, with little recovery time between peak periods for staff and the system.
NHS leaders are urging eligible people to get flu vaccinations. Medical director Prof Frankie Swords said there were "ominous" signs of winter pressure already affecting hospitals, with more patients arriving at A&E with flu and other respiratory viruses than usual for the time of year. "And unfortunately, people are still waiting longer than we would like them to," she added. RCN England executive director Patricia Marquis said the extra money was welcome in the short term but would ultimately prove "just another sticking plaster on a system that is at breaking point," adding that the nursing workforce needed to deliver these services goes into winter "already running on empty and short of staff."
Meanwhile, the waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England rose for the second month in a row. An estimated 7.37 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of August, relating to 6.24 million patients - the highest numbers since October 2025, raising questions about whether the NHS will meet the government's target of treating 92% of patients within 18 weeks by 2029. The broader picture remains a familiar one: a rise in people waiting for NHS treatment for the fourth month in a row, and warnings from a watchdog about a two-tier health system as more people turn to private care.