NHS Winter Crisis Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateAndrew Bridgen
Main Page: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)Department Debates - View all Andrew Bridgen's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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The hon. Lady is absolutely right to point to the increased demand channelled in part through very local facilities such as pharmacies and NHS 111. The latter has seen a 21.5% increase in the volume of calls in the last month, but, despite that, has had nearly a doubling, compared with a year ago, of the number of calls dealt with by a clinician—just under 40%—which is very impressive.
On my behalf and that, I hope, of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), may I welcome the £4.2 million of additional winter funding for the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust? To remind the Labour party what an NHS crisis really is, will my hon. Friend tell the House who was in charge at the time of the Mid Staffs crisis—
Order. I have tried over a period of seven and a half years to educate the hon. Gentleman, and I am afraid that on the whole my efforts have been unavailing. I have tried to explain to him that his responsibility is to ask questions about the policy of the Government, for which it is the responsibility of the Government to answer; it is not the occasion for asking questions about the policy of the Opposition or the opposing party when in government. It is a point that is so blindingly obvious that only an extraordinarily sophisticated person could fail to grasp it.