The minefield of hospital visits for ministers over the years
Sky's Jon Craig says the clash between Tony Blair and Sharon Storer, a partner of a cancer patient at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, in 2001 remains the "most famous ambushing" of a senior politician at a hospital.
Monday 19 December 2022 20:24, UK
For senior politicians such as cabinet ministers or party leaders, a hospital visit may seem like a good idea: a voter-friendly photo-op portraying a caring image and a cosy bedside manner.
But as the Health Secretary Steve Barclay learned to his cost as he was harangued by Sarah Pinnington-Auld, mother of a three-year-old daughter with cystic fibrosis, they're a political minefield and fraught with danger.
Hell hath no fury like a distraught parent or close relative of a seriously ill patient - or indeed an irate nurse or medic - when given the opportunity to confront a normally smooth and unflappable politician visiting a hospital ward.
Mr Barclay should have learned that lesson by now. Back in August, in his previous stint as health secretary, a woman told him during a visit to Moorfields eye hospital that the Conservatives had had "long enough" to fix the NHS.
After a tour of operating theatres, Mr Barclay was giving media interviews outside the hospital when the woman, visibly angry, told him the government had done "bugger all" to fix hospital waiting times.
Rishi Sunak has come a cropper too. In October he was confronted on nurses' pay during a visit to Croydon University Hospital. Not surprisingly, perhaps the prime minister hasn't found time to visit a hospital since then.
After asking a 77-year-old patient recovering from surgery how the nurses were treating her, she told Mr Sunak: "It's a pity you don't pay them more."
"We're trying," he pleaded. But she was unimpressed. "No, you're not trying, you need to try harder," she told him.
It got worse for the PM. When Mr Sunak went on to say that the NHS was important, she said passionately: "Yes, and look after it!"
Health secretaries, obviously, are the most vulnerable to a hospital ambush. In January this year an intensive care doctor challenged Sajid Javid on Covid vaccinations at King's College Hospital, London.
Declaring that he hadn't been vaccinated and jabs for young people weren't necessary, consultant anaesthetist Steve James told Mr Javid he was against making it obligatory for NHS staff to be vaccinated and denied the virus was causing "very significant problems" for young people.
Party leaders and prime ministers can't escape either. Just weeks after becoming PM in 2019 Boris Johnson was confronted at Whipps Cross University Hospital in east London.
Parent Omar Salem told him there were too few doctors and nurses in the emergency ward to take care of his seven-day-old daughter. "The NHS has been destroyed and now you come here for a press opportunity," he told Mr Johnson.
David Cameron didn't escape the curse of the angry medic either. In 2011 he and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg were left bewildered when an irate senior doctor burst into a ward at Guy's Hospital in London during a visit.
Declaring that he was a "senior orthopaedic surgeon", he objected to members of the PM's entourage not rolling up their sleeves. "Why is it that we're all told to walk around like this and these people…?" he protested before being drowned out.
However, it's not just Tories who get treatment they don't want on hospital visits. Labour prime ministers have fared no better in avoiding the fury of stroppy and distressed relatives.
In 2008, a woman whose father had his heart operation cancelled at the last minute confronted Gordon Brown when the then PM visited the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Exeter.
Mitzi Stapleton said she had been told her father Frederick Whitelegg, 77, was unable to have his heart operation because, although the surgeon was ready to perform the procedure, there was no free bed.
But the most famous ambushing of a senior politician at a hospital remains a clash with Tony Blair at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, by Sharon Storer, partner of a cancer patient, following his manifesto launch in the city in the 2001 election campaign.
The normally assured Mr Blair looked lost for words as Ms Storer attacked his record on providing more nurses and more hospital beds and said her partner's treatment in the A&E unit had been "absolutely disgusting".
The Tory chairman at the time, Michael Ancram, said Ms Storer had "blown apart Labour's credibility", adding: "This afternoon in Birmingham four years of Labour spin were crushed by four minutes of reality."
Despite all these calamities over the years, senior politicians seem undaunted by the risks and pitfalls of hospital visits. Either they never learn, or they're prepared to endure the pain of face-to-face criticism on the ward.