Patient groups and the main health union, Unison, claim that the American- style system, which classes some calls as more urgent than others, discriminates against those with a poor grasp of language. It also assumes, they argue, that thepublic can tell the difference between a drunk in a stupor and a diabetic in a coma.
Both groups have condemned the so-called “Priority Dispatch System”.Under the system, a person dialling 999 is asked pre-set questions about the patient’s condition and an operator decides whether it is an immediately life-threatening “Alpha call”, to be met in eight minutes, or a less urgent “Beta” case, to be dealt with in 14 minutes in towns and 19 in rural areas.A woman phoning to say her husband has chest pains, for example, is asked, “Is the patient conscious? Is the patient breathing?” A “no” answer to either of these gives the call Alpha status. Further questions may include “Is the patient sweating?” and “Has the patient got a rapid heart rate?”Gary Fereday, information officer for the National Association of Community Health Councils in England and Wales (the patients’ watchdog), fears the system discriminates against people with language difficulties and could lead to “life-threatening mistakes”.And Maggie Dunn, senior national officer for Unison, while commending the fact that operators can give first-aid advice to callers prior to the arrival of the ambulance, questions whether calls can accurately be classed by medically untrained staff.On 1 April, the Priority Dispatch System went live in Essex, Berkshire, the West Midlands and Derbyshire Other ambulance trusts have expressed an interest in it.. On Tuesday, the first anniversary of her daughter’s death, Ellen Allen will take her baby and her son to their sister’s grave and lay a wreath. But even though the day has a shattering significance for the Allen family and for the town of Corby, Northamptonshire, where 13-year-old Louise Allen was killed defending a friend, it will be overshadowed by a second event. It is also the eve of the release of the two girls convicted of her manslaughter.

On Wednesday, the girls who kicked her to death at a fairground, now aged 13, will be welcomed with a party held by their families and attended by the girl-gang to which they both belonged.
Their light sentences are testimony to the fact that the girls, who cannot be named because of the age at which they committed their crime, never set out to kill Louise Allen. One, who had kicked her as she lay still, ran for an inhaler in the belief that Louise was going blue because of an asthma attack. It was a savage and senseless kicking, but nobody thought Louise would die.The judge was lenient, but Corby knew only that two girls aged 11 and 12 had kicked a girl to death with all the horrific resonances of the Jamie Bulger murder. When the smaller, tougher girl’s family moved away after her arrest they left their flat to a mob which ripped it apart.

The larger, quieter girl’s family stayed put under virtual house arrest. Their house is easy to find: broken windows front and back, “You will die scum” daubed by the front door.Over 24,000 local people signed a petition to have the girls’ two-year sentence extended. Now the girls are to be released after serving only one year in a nearby prison with facilities kids in Corby can only dream of, the talk is all of stringing them up.Among the girls’ peers, loyalties are divided. The Canada Square Girls, a gang of about 20 nine to 19-year-olds named after the desolate low-rise council estate where they gather, are excited by the prospect of their release.