Conservative Shadow Health Secretary, James Evans, has called for the Welsh Labour Health Minister, Jeremy Miles, to step in and address the growing chaos engulfing the ambulance service in Wales. Mr Evans issued his plea after spending a day with ambulance crews, during which he witnessed the severe pressures they face daily.

Mr Evans described a troubling scene at the Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran, where he saw 18 ambulances parked up in the hospital bay, unable to offload patients while urgent calls continued to flood in.

Mr Evans said:“I must pay tribute to the paramedics and technicians who are completely frustrated by what is going on. Being a paramedic is a vocation, not just a job, for them. They want to be out on the road, offering emergency assistance to people and then getting them into hospital for further care. Instead, they are being forced to sit parked up for hours, with patients in the back of their vehicles unable to hand the over to get the care they need because the hospitals cannot accept them.

“The situation yesterday was horrendous. Some patients had been waiting in ambulances for hours. A Freedom of Information request revealed that one patient waited for 24 hours in the back of an ambulance last year in Wales. This is unacceptable.

“The ambulance service declared a critical incident earlier this week. Yet, since then, we have heard nothing from the Health Minister. He needs to get out, to see the reality of the situation for himself, acknowledge the crisis, and tell us what he plans to do to fix it.”

Mr Evans shared a video from the Grange University Hospital showing the 20 ambulances queued up, adding the delays in patient handover have become so acute that the hospital has installed fans to disperse diesel fumes from ambulances idling with their engines running.