Business of the House

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is so right to remind us of the 83rd anniversary of the Kindertransport, which was a wonderful humanitarian approach that crucially ensured there were safe routes for coming to this country. That is what we should work on, as the previous Prime Minister David Cameron did, taking up to 20,000 Syrians from refugee camps around Syria, rather than expecting people to take dangerous journeys. It is really important that people who come to this country to claim asylum do so by legal and safe routes, rather than being in the hands of people-traffickers. That is why the Nationality and Borders Bill, the remaining stages of which we will have next week, will make it easier for people who make legal claims and come here lawfully, and harder for people who come here using illegal routes.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

In my constituency, a 91-year-old man was left waiting for an ambulance for seven hours. This crisis includes the Leader of the House’s constituency: in the south-west, ambulance waiting times are sky high. The crisis is also reflected across the country. In north Shropshire, response times to urgent calls are now four hours. May we, urgently, have a debate in Government time on ambulance waiting times?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point because our constituents in North East Somerset and in Bath share health facilities. We have over 4,000 ambulance crews in operation across the country, which is an increase of 500 since 2018. NHS England has given ambulance trusts an extra £55 million to boost staff numbers this winter and there is an extra £5.4 billion for the NHS altogether. Significant amounts of money are being put in, but I accept that when one is waiting seven hours for an ambulance that is not much of a compensation. There is an issue and things do need to improve.