Keir Starmer tore into Boris Johnson’s record on the NHS today accusing him of presiding over “24-hours in A&E”.
The Labour leader hammered the prime minister over the state of the NHS, long backlogs and the difficulties of getting a GP appointment.
Starmer said when Johnson falls short he just “changes the rules or lowers the bar” during a heated prime minister’s questions.
Starmer added: “In March, he proposed changing the NHS contract.
“He wants to double the length of time patients can be made to wait for surgery from one year to two years.
“On top of that, he scrapped zero tolerance of 12 hour waits at A&E.
“24 Hours at A&E used to be a TV programme, now it’s his policy.
“He’s telling them he’s going to turn over a new leaf. So why doesn’t he start by scrapping his plans to green light ‘wanting and inadequate’ NHS standards.”
The comments referred to the Channel 4 TV show in which cameras film around the clock in some of Britain’s busiest A&E departments.
Johnson hit back saying his line of attack is “not working”, adding: “We’ve not only raised the standards in the NHS, we’re not only reducing waiting times for those who’ve had to wait the longest.
“But what we’re doing, more fundamentally, is doing what the people in this country can see is simple, common sense.
“And that is using our economic strength to invest in doctors and nurses and get people on the wards, giving people their scans and their screens and their tests in a more timely matter and taking our NHS forward.”
During the exchange, Starmer asked the PM about the admission of culture secretary Nadine Dorries that the Conservatives’ pandemic preparation was “inadequate” for six years.
Starmer asked: “Why did his culture secretary – I think she is hiding along the bench – say that successive Conservative governments left our health service wanting and inadequate when the pandemic hit?”
Johnson replied: “Everybody knows that when the pandemic hit it was an entirely novel virus for which the whole world was unprepared. Nobody at that stage, nobody knew how to test for it, nobody knew what the right quarantine rules should be.
“But as it happened, the UK government and our amazing NHS not only approved the first vaccine anywhere in the world, we were the first to get it into anybody’s arms and we had the fastest rollout anywhere in Europe.”
The culture secretary made the admission during a public attack on her Tory colleague Jeremy Hunt.
It was Johnson’s first PMQs after he survived a confidence vote on Monday evening.
The prime minister attempted to “draw a line” under the vote which he won by by 211 to 148.
However, the saga has left the PM severely damaged after more than 40 per cent of Conservative MPs voted to oust him.