Hampshire woman threatens to park outside hospital after ambulance strike action

Watch: Vickie Taylor agrees with the strikes, but fears for her life as she relies regularly on ambulances to get to her to hospital

A woman from Hampshire is threatening to park outside hospital, as she fears she will not get the help she needs in time during the ambulance strikes.

Vickie Taylor suffers from severe asthma which causes her to struggle with her breathing, and regularly relies on ambulances to get her to hospital.

"It took 47 minutes for that ambulance to come. I was not breathing on my bed.

"How do I trust that an ambulance is ever going to arrive?"

She fears people like her 'will die' as a result of industrial action, but Vicky says she does approve of the strikes.

She said: "It's not their fault. They can only do so much, they can only work with the system that they work in.

"But what do we have to do, when we have severe illnesses that can progress so quickly?

"Twenty minutes before, I was laughing and watching TV with my mum next to me, to me being blue.

"I emailed by consultant and I said to him 'I am so concerned that if my breathing is bad during these strikes, I'm not going to get an ambulance'."

"So I very much plan to park my car outside the hospital, so that I can have treatment if I need it. Because I'm not going to get the help I need.

"I don't trust that I'm going to get the help I need most days."

"But again, I support the strikes, I support the NHS...because I've seen what is happening. And this cannot continue to happen - people are going to die."

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has refused to blame the government for any harm that comes to members of the public during the walkout.

Asked whether it would be the government or striking workers to blame for any harm resulting to patients, Mr Barclay refused to attribute any blame to Downing Street.

He said: "Well it’s the trade unions that have made a decision not to give a national undertaking to cover all of the emergency calls, to leave that to individual decisions with local trusts and with call handlers in terms of some of those emergency calls that will be responded."

"The government has put in place the contingency measures that it can."