Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have discussed with London’s emergency services some of the challenges they face, not least the Olympics and the terrorist threat. All organisations in this country are having to make savings and efficiencies and try to concentrate on the front line. That is what is happening in the police and elsewhere. The point about ambulance services and the NHS is that we are protecting spending on the NHS. There was, frankly, only one party that proposed that at the last election. If we had not proposed that, it would not be happening. We listened to the Labour party, including the former health spokesman, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who spoke earlier, and they were going to cut the NHS. That would have affected the London ambulance service like everything else.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

Q7. Does the Prime Minister share the shadow Chancellor’s view that the Government should adopt the Obama Administration’s pace of deficit reduction?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. For months the Opposition have been telling us that we should follow the American approach. It now emerges that the Obama deficit reduction programme will go exactly as fast, as quick and as deep as the proposals in the UK, so one of the planks of the good ship Balls has been completely holed below the waterline.