Steve Barclay was challenged over ambulance waiting times outside a London hospital by an angry member of the public as the NHS prepares for a winter crisis.
Speaking outside Moorfields Eye Hospital, Mr Barclay was accused of not doing enough to stop the backlog of NHS appointments and delays in ambulance waiting times.
Confronting Mr Barclay, the woman said: “Are you going to do anything about the ambulances waiting, and the people dying out?”
Mr Barclay responded saying, “of course we are”, but the woman continued: “Don’t you think 12 years is long enough?
“Twelve years – you’ve done bugger all about it. People have died, and all you’ve done is nothing.”
After the interruption, Mr Barclay insisted that reducing ambulance waiting times was an “absolute priority”.
Following the heated interaction, when asked by the PA news agency whether he felt the NHS was equipped for winter given the ambulance delays, Mr Barclay said: "There’s a range of measures that we’re taking.
"We’re looking at conveyance rates in ambulances, we’re looking at how we address variation in performance, we’re looking at funding - an extra £150 million to the ambulance service, a further £50 million into call centres, for 111 and 999, in terms of call handling, a further £30 million into St John’s Ambulance around the auxiliary ambulance performance.”
Overall, NHS data for June showed that it took ambulances 51 minutes and 38 seconds to respond to emergency calls such as heart attacks and strokes.
The average wait time before a call is answered on the emergency line has also increased to 64 seconds - the slowest since 2017.
As of June, the NHS also reported that 6.73 million people are waiting for treatment.
