Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barbara Keeley and Oliver Dowden

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As ever, my right hon. Friend is absolutely correct to highlight the record of Labour’s police and crime commissioner, and West Midlands police has actually been put in special measures on Simon Foster’s watch. When it comes to the green belt, we have all seen the new wheeze from the Labour party—redesignate green belt “grey belt” and concrete all over it. Well, the Conservatives will not allow that to happen, and people up and down the country will vote Conservative to stop that happening.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

Q8. Conservative Ministers like to blame strikes and the pandemic for the appalling waiting times in the NHS. The Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has not hit its target for seeing patients in A&E within four hours since 2015—before the strikes and before the pandemic, but five years after the Conservatives came to office. So who does the Deputy Prime Minister blame for that?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Labour Members like to pretend the pandemic did not happen, and they like—[Interruption.] That is the cause of the biggest pressure on the NHS. They complain about NHS performance while backing strikes by doctors, who unreasonably want a 35% pay rise. Despite all of those pressures, actually A&E performance has improved in the past month.