Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

In the spirit of Christmas, I am happy to tell my right hon. and learned Friend that Lister Hospital received an extra £2.5 million to help it with winter pressures as a result of the Chancellor’s Budget announcement, and it was told that on Friday.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

With patients in Exeter now waiting more than a year, in pain, for vital surgery—well beyond the 18-week maximum guaranteed in the NHS constitution—can the Secretary of State explain the contradictory statements of the Chancellor, who said at the time of the Budget that he expected significant “inroads” to be made into growing waiting time lists, and the NHS England board, which met the following week and said that NHS waiting time standards

“will not be fully funded and met next year”?

[Mr Hunt]

I have been waiting for the right hon. Gentleman to issue the press release welcoming the £1.4 million of extra funding that the Royal Devon and Exeter got in the Chancellor’s Budget, but for some extraordinary reason it has not been forthcoming. Let me tell him that, as many people have commented, the NHS got a lot more money than it was expecting in the winter announcement—

[Mr Bradshaw]

Answer the question.

[Mr Hunt]

This is money that will, to answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question, make a big difference in helping the NHS get back to meeting its constitutional waiting time targets.