What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

An MP's father 'died in his arms' after being sent home from a busy A&E department - 'because there were not enough beds'.

Toby Perkins, the Labour representative for Chesterfield, claims his dad went to Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital suffering from “extreme pain” - and showing classic signs of an aneurysm.

But despite having previously suffered from a near fatal aneurysm in the past, he was packed off in a cab home.

The Coventry Telegraph reports he was one of several sick patients sent home prematurely that day because doctors didn’t have enough resources to cope.

The hospital admits Mr Perkins' father should not have been sent home without a scan.

Speaking about his father’s ordeal during a Commons debate on the NHS, Mr Perkins said: “Last year on Friday, July 15 my father died of an aneurysm.

“Four days earlier he had been sent home from the A&E department at Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital with what a vascular surgeon described at my father’s inquest as classical aneurysm symptoms.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

“With a history of vascular problems and a previous near-fatal aneurysm, he presented at the hospital’s A&E department suffering extreme pain in his right groin radiating to side and back.

“He was described as being confused and uncommunicative.

“And yet, after five hours in A&E, he was sent home in a taxi. Four days later he died in my arms.”

While mistakes were made in his father’s care, Mr Perkins said the failings were due to the strain NHS casualty departments up and down the country are under.

Recounting the registrar’s response to questioning at his father’s inquest, Mr Perkins said: “He said how it was non-stop on that Friday afternoon, particularly busy.

“From one case to another he was constantly having to decide, as he did most days, which sick patient, all of whom needed to be in a hospital bed, to send home this time.

“He said there simply aren’t enough beds for those who need to be in them, so every day we have to make these choices.”

Quoting from the registrar, he went on: “I probably sent home five people that day who should have been in a hospital bed, but those are the choices we are left with when there simply aren’t enough.

“He asked if my father minded going home and when he didn’t object he stuck him in a cab.

“These pressures and these life and death decisions are not unique to that registrar, or to that hospital.”

The Coventry Telegraph reports that England's NHS spending lags behind Germany and France’s, and patients are not getting the care their European neighbours do, he said.

Mr Perkins said: “I’m ashamed to say that I’m grateful my father had his first life-threatening aneurysm on holiday in Germany.

“The quality of the emergency care he received in Munich saved his life and gave us, his family, three more years with him. I regret last year the same could not be said of our NHS.”

The NHS and social care is in the midst of a crisis that leaves the elderly and disabled isolated and struggling to cope - and “means people being sent home from A&E to die”, Mr Perkins said.

“We must do better.”

A University Hospital Coventry spokesman said: “We would like to apologise to Mr Perkins and his family for the distress caused on the death of his father.

"Although the inquest found his father died of natural causes, we are clear that he should not have been discharged without a scan and we have changed our practice so that where there is a suspected aneurysm, as there was with his father, a scan will be done to rule it out in the first instance.

"We have also increased training for the surgical teams who see patients in the emergency department.

"While we acknowledge this is too late for his father we hope it provides some comfort to Mr Perkins and his family.”