A Tory health minister who triggered outrage by saying there were “seats available” when questioned about patients sleeping on hospital floors has quit.
Philip Dunne left the Government following his response to questions in the House of Commons on Monday about shocking images of the sick lying on floors because there were no beds at Pinderfields General Hospital , Wakefield.
Responding to urgent questions on the NHS crisis he was forced to apologise and admitted “clearly there has been a lot of pressure on space for beds.”
But he told MPs: “There are seats available in most hospitals when beds are not available.”
On Tuesday he told the Telegraph he had quit his role saying: “I have been very proud to have been a defence and health minister for five and a half years. I wish the Government well and will support it from the back benches.”
The issue was raised in the Commons by Labour’s Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) who said one of her constituents had taken the photographs of “poorly people in chairs waiting for hours, not being given a bed or a trolley.”
In one photograph a patient dressed only in a loose hospital gown lies next to a metal wheelchair. A second shows a man, attached to a drip, bedded down with his head resting on his rolled-up coat.
