Trolls attack Lily Allen after she speaks out against NHS decline

Lily Allen has spoken out about NHS cuts after she revealed her two-year-old daughter Marnie was left waiting for an ambulance after impaling her neck on a railing. Allen said while doctors and nurses could not be blamed for the situation, she had noticed a decline in the NHS since the Conservative party came to power in 2010.

In an interview with News Roast podcast, Allen said she was told she would have to wait 30 minutes for an ambulance after her daughter fell outside her home, leaving her with a split chin and an injury to her neck. She said: "It was a huge gash in a two-year-old's neck. Eventually, I hailed a cab and was holding her chin together with a piece of flannel."

After arriving at A&E to be handed a ticket and told to wait, despite what she called a "hole" in her child's neck, Allen acknowledged: "You can't hold it against the doctors and nurses, it is not their fault."

She added: "I've seen its decline. When I had my first baby, the midwife came every day… Only three years into a Tory government [after the birth of her second child] we had one visit. It was pretty bad. It's horrendous."

During the podcast, Allen described herself as being "politically active" and said she had a "need to air my views".

She also said as someone who had left school at 15 without any GCSEs or A levels, she was largely uneducated, but felt that by speaking up she could encourage others with a similar level of experience to engage in political discourse.

The hosts of the podcast welcomed Allen as someone who they applauded for standing up for compassion and the values they said made them "intrinsic to why" they were "proud to be British" in what they referred to as a "dark time". However, it is the same commentary that has seen Allen face a backlash via social media in recent months.

Allen recently quit Twitter for a period of time following abuse after she revealing she has a bipolar disorder and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder following the stillbirth of her son in 2010. The account was subsequently taken over by a friend known as "Dennis".

In the podcast interview, Allen spoke of how recent events such as her trip to visit migrants in Calais, during which she apologised for the UK to a teenage migrant who had fled from the Taliban and Isis, were taken out of context.

She also acknowledged the struggles of the more economically vulnerable members of UK society and said that stemming immigration was often presented as the solution to their problems by the same right-wing media.

Following release of the podcast, Allen has once again faced criticism by social media users, with a number challenging the impact of open borders and immigration on the NHS.

In the run-up to UK's referendum on membership of the EU last year, campaigners on the Leave side claimed divorce from the EU would save £350m ($425.88m) a week which could be used to fund the NHS instead, though campaigners subsequently distanced themselves from the figure.