Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of being “frankly in denial about the state of the NHS” as he again used prime minister’s questions to pressure her over the performance of the health service this winter.

Devoting all his questions to the issue, the Labour leader said the NHS faced “death by a thousand cuts”. May responded by insisting the health service was better prepared then ever for the winter, and criticising the record of the Labour-run Welsh government on health provision.

Corbyn began an often noisy PMQs by referencing reports that Boris Johnson had planned to demand the government commit to spending an extra £100m a week on the NHS after Brexit, which saw him criticised by fellow cabinet ministers.



Asked by Corbyn whether she agreed with the foreign secretary that the NHS needed an extra £5bn a year, May dodged the question by saying the budget had given it £6bn more.

Corbyn then referenced May’s claim about the health service being well-prepared for winter, noting a letter from senior A&E doctors to her expressing “very serious concerns” about patient safety. He asked: “Who should the public believe – the prime minister or A&E doctors?”

May responded: “It is right that the NHS was better prepared this winter than it ever has been before,” citing statistics on extra beds, and saying 2.8 million more people were going to A&E a year than in 2010.

The prime minister added: “Our NHS is indeed providing for patients. There are winter pressures, we were prepared for those winter pressures, and we will ensure, as we have done every year under this Conservative government, that the NHS receives more funding.”

After Corbyn asked a question about the numbers of patients having to wait 12 hours or more at emergency departments, May replied by giving statistics saying many more people in Wales had been forced to wait that long.

Corbyn responded: “The prime minister is responsible for the underfunding of the Welsh government. Despite that, the overall Welsh Labour health budget has grown by 5% in 2016-17.”

After more skirmishes about patients dying because of delays to ambulances, the pair ended with passionate orations about the pressures facing the NHS, both greeted noisily by their respective MPs.

Mentioning a man who had contacted him saying his 93-year-old father had waited four hours for an ambulance, Corbyn said: “These are not isolated cases. These are common parlance all over the country. It needs money, it needs support, and it needs it now.

“The prime minister is frankly in denial about the state of the NHS. Even the absent foreign secretary recognises it, but the prime minister isn’t listening. People using the NHS can see from their own experience it’s being starved of resources.

“People are dying unnecessarily in the back of ambulances and in hospital corridors. GP numbers are down. Nurses are leaving. The NHS is in crisis. Tory MPs might not like it, but I ask this question of the prime minister: when is she going to face up to the reality and take action to save the NHS from death by a thousand cuts?”

May replied by saying: “There is only one part of the NHS that has seen a cut in its funding – it’s the NHS in Wales under a Labour government.”

Meanwhile, the NHS will receive less, rather than more, money as a result of Brexit, according to two economists from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In an article for King’s College London’s website Peter Levell and George Stoye dispute claims this week by Johnson, the foreign secretary, and the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, that leaving could lead to a big rise in the NHS’s budget.



They argue that “Brexit is likely to mean less money for public services, including the NHS, than otherwise would have been the case”, citing the damage to Britain’s economy that many economists expect to happen after the UK quits the EU.

While Britain will get back about £8bn – its existing net contribution to the EU after taking into account its £5bn rebate – losing its membership of the EU trading bloc will involve a “hit to the public finances [of] about £15bn per year by the early 2020s, about 10% of the NHS budget, more than outweighing the UK’s net contribution to the EU”, they add.

Paul Johnson, the IFS’s director, tweeted that piece showed that “the NHS Brexit dividend … does not exist. In fact we would need to spend £1bn a year more just to compensate NHS staff for the higher prices already seen since the referendum.”

