Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. We made an important and difficult decision that, while other budgets were being cut, we would protect the NHS budget. That was not supported by the Labour party, but the fact is that we now have the best ever performance for patients waiting over 18 weeks, the numbers for those waiting more than 26 weeks and 52 weeks have also reached record lows, and average waiting times for both in-patients and out-patients are lower than they were in May 2010. The Labour party often asked whether the test should be the number of people waiting over 18 weeks. Well, if that was the test, we have passed it with flying colours.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Q4. Just over a year ago the Prime Minister launched his flagship export enterprise finance guarantee scheme. We now learn that only five companies have benefited from the scheme. Hard-working businesses in Birmingham that would like to export but cite lack of export finance guarantee as a problem are keen to know who those five lucky companies are and why the scheme has been such a dismal failure.

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly write to the hon. Lady, because the truth is that that export scheme has been rolled into the export guarantee scheme more generally and the amount of export support is massively up on the last election, with billions of pounds in extra money being spent. The other point I would make is that exports, compared with 2010, were up by over 12% last year.