Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think my hon. Friend speaks for the whole country about what the general secretary of Unite said. Let me quote it directly:

“I’m calling upon the general public to engage in civil disobedience.”

That is what he said. Let us remember that Unite is the biggest single donor to the Opposition, providing around a third of their money, and had more of a role than anybody else in putting the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) in his place. It is not good enough for the Opposition just to put out a tweet; they need to condemn this utterly and start turning back the money.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q3. No top-down reorganisation of the NHS, no reduction in front-line police officers and no cuts to tax credits for low-income families: why does the Prime Minister find it so hard to keep his promises to the British public?

[The Prime Minister]

We promised to increase spending on the NHS and we are boosting spending on the NHS. We promised the cancer drugs fund, and 10,000 people have got extra drugs through that fund. We promised that the number of doctors would grow faster than the number of bureaucrats and, since the election, the number of doctors has gone up by 4,000 and the number of bureaucrats has gone down by 5,000. That is what coalition policy is doing for our health service.