Key points

Jeremy Corbyn returned to a familiar subject, the state of the NHS, in a clash with Theresa May. A day after Boris Johnson trailed that he would use a cabinet meeting to demand an extra £5bn a year for the NHS after Brexit – and was subsequently slapped down by No 10 – Corbyn asked whether May agreed with her foreign secretary that the money was needed for the health service?

May retorted that Corbyn had been in the house when the autumn budget was unveiled, which would give the NHS £6bn. Corbyn said that, in fact, £2.8bn would be spread “like thin gruel” over two years. Two weeks ago, he added, May told the Commons the NHS had been prepared for the winter, but this week 68 A&E doctors wrote to her saying that patients were dying prematurely because doctors were too busy to treat them. Who should people believe, those doctors or the prime minister?

The NHS had been prepared for the winter better than before, May insisted, citing 3,000 more beds in use, and 2.8 million more people visiting A&E than in 2010. “The NHS is providing for patients.”

Corbyn said 14,000 beds had been lost since 2010, and that the King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust agree the NHS needs an extra £4bn. In December NHS England recorded its worst performance in A&E, and the statistics authority says the numbers may be even worse as “the figures were fiddled”. When will the real ones be published?

May said the NHS was open about publishing figures relative to its targets. If Corbyn wants to talk about figures, she added, in England 497 people had to wait more than 12 hours to be treated, but in Wales, under a Labour government, 3,741 people did.

Corbyn said the PM was responsible for the underfunding of the Welsh government. So far this winter, 100,000 patients were forced to wait for more than 30 minutes in the back of ambulances. “How many more will face life-threatening waits?”

May said Corbyn’s only response to the problem was asking for more money. She said at the last election the Institute of Fiscal Studies had analysed Labour and the Tories’ plans to fund the NHS and there was “not much to choose between them”.

Raising his voice, Corbyn said a Labour government would not be underfunding or privatising the NHS and underfunding social care: “It would be committed to an NHS free at point of use as a human right.” He added that a whistleblower had claimed that as many as 80 patients had been harmed or had died over three weeks due to ambulance delays this winter. What investigation was being carried out?

May said an investigation would take place and lessons would be learned. The Tories’ plan for the NHS is one that would put patients first. Corbyn replied the health service “needs money, it needs support and it needs it now. The prime minister is in denial about the state of the NHS.”

Verdict

One reason why No 10 has reportedly been resistant to Boris Johnson’s call for an announcement about more money for the NHS is that Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, thinks the Tories can never win on health, and these exchanges seemed to confirm that.

Jeremy Corbyn started with two excellent questions – classic unanswerable zingers. He might have been better to stick with these lines of attack (unsurprisingly, May just sidestepped them), because his later questions did not have quite the same potency, but they still amounted to a solid and persuasive case for higher NHS funding that May could not answer very effectively.

May came off worst, as she normally does on the NHS, but in some respects these exchanges were different. She did not try to pivot into an argument about the economy, as she usually does, perhaps sensing that attacking Labour’s tax policy does not help much in a debate about the NHS. Instead, she tried to make an argument about how the NHS needs not just money, but best practice. That may be true, but in the face of the extensive evidence cited by Corbyn about NHS failings, it sounded a tad irrelevant.

You could tell May was in difficulty because by question three she was going on about Wales. Normally Corbyn just brushes aside the complaints about the NHS in “Labour Wales”, but this time he made a decent stab at blaming it on Westminster underfunding, and that helped him too.

Memorable lines

Tory MPs might not like it, but I ask, when is she going to face up to reality and save the NHS from death by a thousand cuts?

Corbyn asks his final question to May amid barracking from the government benches

This is a government that is building a country that works for everyone, that people can look at with optimism and hope.

May reprises her slogan from the Tory party conference – which memorably fell off the wall at the climax of her speech