John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 years ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Order. Understandably, there is extensive interest in this subject. Accommodating anywhere near the number of would-be contributors will require brevity, to be exemplified—I hope and if he is true to form—by Mr Philip Hollobone.
People in Kettering appreciate plain speaking. Can the Health Secretary tell the House what the NHS budget was in 2014-15, what it will be in 2020-21 and what the difference is between the two numbers?
Order. We require pithiness personified. I think that calls for Sir Desmond Swayne.
How much more would the Secretary of State have had to spend per year by 2021 if the Chancellor had taken the Labour party’s advice?
I am happy to remind the House, as my hon. Friend requests, that we inherited this situation from the Labour party in 2010. Despite that toxic legacy, the people working in the Sherwood Forest hospitals have done an incredible job of turning the trust around since it was put into special measures a few years ago. I commend them on their progress, which I hope will bear fruit and allow the trust to come out of special measures soon.
I would like to conclude these exchanges by 4.30 pm because there is other pressing business. If people take a long time, they are preventing their colleagues from contributing. I am sorry, but it is as simple as that.
Does the Secretary of State believe that there is a need for additional funding for adult social care over and above that which has been already allocated?
Give a serious answer to a serious question—you’re a buffoon! [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”]
Order. I did not hear the offending term, but if it has been reported to me accurately, and the Clerks are invariably accurate in these matters, it seems to me to be a matter of taste, rather than of order.
It is regrettable that the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), has led this attack on a Government who are doing so much. Will my right hon. Friend tell me what more is being done to recoup the money that should have been clawed back from those who had health insurance and who should not have used our system?