Key points
The final PMQs of 2017 saw Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn brandishing rival statistics about the NHS. The Labour leader quoted Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, saying that the service needs another £4bn, and that it had received less than half that. The prime minister replied that NHS funding was at record levels and that despite Corbyn’s complaints “week after week”, there were more diagnostic tests than seven years ago, 2.2 million people getting operations, more elderly patients getting hip replacements and nearly 65,000 people who would not be alive had they not had improved cancer care.
Corbyn said many patients were kept waiting in the back of ambulances for more than half an hour: if the NHS was properly resourced, why was it not meeting its targets, and could May give a cast iron guarantee that these targets would be met? May said the government’s NHS reforms were delivering results: “We’re proud of NHS and we’ll make it even better.”
Corbyn said A&E waiting targets had not been met for two years, and where were the 5,000 GPs the government had promised to recruit by 2020? May retorted that in Wales, where Labour is in government, the standard waiting time in A&E was last met in 2008.
That was because Wales depended on block income from the UK, which had been cut by 5%, Corbyn replied. Cancer patients start treatment within 62 days, better than in England. He added that there were fewer GPs than when May became prime minister, £6m cuts had been made to social care budgets, 2 million older people’s care needs had been unmet, and yet the chancellor, Philip Hammond, had failed to put an extra penny in the budget for social care.
May said the Tories had put £2bn into social care in the spring budget. Labour’s NHS record was described as a mess – by Corbyn, before he was Labour leader. “When he is running for leader, he denounces Labour’s record. Now he is leader, he tries to defend it,” the prime minister said.
Corbyn responded by quoting the Tory leader of Warwickshire country council, who said the government needed to tackle chronic underfunding in the NHS. This winter, the service is in crisis. May finished by taunting Corbyn over his prediction that he would be prime minister by Christmas, saying Labour was “wrong, wrong, wrong” about that, as well as about Brexit and the budget.
Verdict
May left Tory MPs shouting “more, more, more”, and it was certainly one of her most confident performances in recent weeks, but it was not a particularly illuminating exchange, or even a very decisive one. We end the year where PMQs concludes much of the time, with what’s broadly a stalemate. Corbyn did not have any particularly memorable moments, but his questions were solid and robust, and his performance probably ended up in the “job done” category.
Arguments about the NHS at PMQs often just become statistic-slinging sessions, and that is what this felt like. Most of the figures (including the obligatory reference to Wales) sounded familiar, although May did have a new claim about the number of people now apparently alive who would not have been under previous cancer survival rates. It was moderately interesting, but did not clinch the argument. May, though, did beat Corbyn and in the quote swapping challenge towards the end (her Corbyn quote trumped his quote from a Tory council leader) and May’s final soundbite did what was required in the circumstances.
Memorable lines
Staff numbers are falling. Budgets have been cut. The PM has shown just how out of touch she is. The NHS has been recklesslessly put at risk by her government.
Corbyn on the winter crisis in the health service
Recently Jeremy Corbyn was saying he would be prime minister by Christmas. He was wrong – I am, and the Conservatives are in government.
May points out that she is still here
