One emergency medical consultant said: “If they could put the charging points at hospitals I would have less of a concern: waits are so long at Emergency Departments you could charge a jumbo jet. My worry is that they are looking to have charging points only in the ambulance station, so that’s even more time lost.”
One in 10 ambulances already spends more than an hour waiting outside hospitals, latest NHS data show.
The emergency medical consultant said: “The worst-case scenario is running out of juice with a patient in the back. I think this is untested territory, I would rather they started testing all of this in Patient Transport Services, where patterns are much more predictable, than in emergency care.”
Paul Bristow, a Tory member of the Commons health and social care committee, said: “Saving lives and patient safety must always come first. The idea that anyone can consider that climate concerns and green zealotry should come before what is best for patients boggles the mind.
“If concerns of first responders and ambulance crews are being overridden it just shows that eco group-think in our NHS is a very real concern.”
Mark Francois, a Conservative member of the public accounts committee urged the NHS not to forget its true purpose.
He said: “Florence Nightingale once famously said that ‘the very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.’ While achieving net zero is a laudable aim, we cannot allow it to trump common sense, especially if it compromises patient safety.
“The most important consideration must be patient safety, comfort and wellbeing.”
An NHS spokesman said: “NHS services must always put patients first when procuring products and it is also right we seek green alternatives, but only when they save the taxpayer money.
“The new electric ambulances are benefiting thousands of patients, hospitals report they are working efficiently, and they could help deliver annual operational savings of £59 million.”
Green ideology clashes with patient welfare
In October 2020, the NHS became the world’s first health service to commit to reaching carbon net zero.
Health officials were so inspired they dreamt up a whole new bureaucracy to drive the agenda.
Plans for the Greener NHS team, seen by The Telegraph, show 48 roles, including five officials on six-figure salaries, in a structure due to come into place next month. All are charged with overseeing efforts to pursue an environmental agenda that means every medicine and product has to undergo an “evergreen assessment”.
The drive comes right from the top, with Amanda Pritchard, NHS chief executive stating in 2021 that “climate change is a health emergency”. Her predecessor – then Sir Simon (now Lord) Stevens – had announced the pledge the year before, in the foreword to a 176-page report.
Yet many of those working in the NHS, and those trying to work with it, say that too often, clinical decisions are being distorted in a push to satisfy the green agenda.
All NHS suppliers providing a new medicine, service or product must undertake an Evergreen Sustainable Supplier Assessment, and meet criteria on emissions, including net zero, and “social values”. The 135-part questionnaire means no decision can be taken without a product’s social values and contribution to emissions targets being considered.
The principles aim to ensure the NHS has no carbon emissions by 2040. But the initiatives are diverting large sums from the front line. One whistleblower said the resources going into the initiatives were “astounding” and “grossly unethical”.
Competitions for funding of promising medical innovations, such as the Small Business Research Initiative Healthcare Programme, tell applicants to put “net zero at the core of the proposal”, a presentation seen by The Telegraph shows.
A whistleblower alleged that businesses with promising medical innovations were being ruled out for grant funding because of “net zero” and “diversity and inclusion” criteria. He said NHS leaders’ “pervasive eco ideology” meant they were putting “environmental concerns ahead of patient welfare”.
He cited an example where clinicians agreed a plastic cannula “would improve patient safety and comfort for a group of their patients, but could not use the product because it contained more plastic than the current product”. It is cheaper and safer than the metal needles used in patients requiring regular blood work, dialysis or chemotherapy, where the metal can damage blood vessels.
“I’ve never been in a situation [until now] where you can’t even get beyond that conversation. They said there were several products that they are no longer able to use, because the trust has decided that they’re not environmentally friendly enough,” he added.
‘Climate-friendly pain relied’
The service has hailed eco-initiatives including “climate-friendly pain relief” for mothers in labour. This will use mobile “destruction units” to supply gas and air. The machines, which women will breathe from and which are already in use in some NHS hospitals, are designed to collect and destroy nitrous oxide – a powerful greenhouse gas produced when gas and air is exhaled. There has also been a big push to “decarbonise” – or replace – the inhalers of around five million patients with asthma for “dry powder” versions because leaders say they account for 3 per cent of NHS emissions.
The move is supported by Asthma and Lung UK, but the charity notes that those who are elderly, very young, or have severe asthma, may “find it hard” to use the dry powder versions, “especially when symptoms are bad”, because they require a strong inhalation force and new technique.
Meanwhile, virtual wards and smartphone consultations with hospital consultants and GPs have all been hailed as initiatives which can reduce the NHS’s carbon output. However, charities for the elderly have raised concerns that shifts dependent on technology risk excluding those who need it most.
A major shift to remote GP appointments during the pandemic meant that at some points, just half of consultations were face-to-face. After repeated calls from ministers, the proportion has crept up, with two in three appointments in person.