Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, as the storms roll in and all memories of summer recede, for the health service,

this only means one thing, the start of the annual winter pressures faced by the NHS.

After record weights in A&E last year, sharp increases in

corridor care and waiting lists spiraling further beyond long-miss targets, what is the government

doing to prevent another crisis this winter? We're going to discuss all that. We have Helen Morgan,

Liberal Democrat MP and her party spokesman on health and social care, along with Rosie Beacon,

research manager and head of health at the restate think care, along with Rosie Beacon, research manager

and head of health at the restate think tank,

and Siva and Under Siva,

Director of Policy at the King's Fund, a health charity.

So Siva, I'm gonna start with you.

What do we mean when we talk about winter pressures?

What does it actually kind of refer to when we talk about it?

Yeah, good question. So I would say that even though the NHS is under pressure for a lot of the year, there is something different about winter.

And partly it's because you have things like winter vomiting bugs, things like norovirus, you have flu, you have even cold weather. And all of these add pressure on

the NHS. And just to give you some examples, when the weather gets cold, you might have people

with some chronic conditions like CUPD, where it's easier to exacerbate. I vividly remember

visiting one A&E department, and they would say they know when the road outside is frosted,

because the hospital was built on a scope and people would just they know when the road outside is frosted because the

hospital was built on a scope and people would just fall. So it's at that practical level.

And I suppose the thing I really think is easy to understate is just how much all of these things

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