Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Davey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I associate myself and my party with the Prime Minister’s comments on Iran. I encourage him to go even further on sanctions and proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Sandra is 71. She has bladder cancer. Just after Christmas, she went into her local A&E. She had to wait 31 hours on a trolley or on a plastic chair to be admitted. Last year, more than half a million people waited for over 12 hours in A&E to be admitted—more than any year in the history of the NHS. This corridor care crisis was created by the Conservatives, but it has got worse under Labour. Will the Prime Minister end this scandal by taking up our plan to end all 12-hour A&E waits this year?

[The Prime Minister]

May I first say through the right hon. Member to Sandra that that is simply not acceptable for her or anybody else? I would appreciate it if he passed that on to her directly. We have put record investment into the NHS so that we can turn this problem around, and we are turning it around.

The right hon. Member puts forward his plans for change, but he never votes for the increase in investment and the measures needed to put them into practice. You cannot change things without investing in them. You cannot call for change and vote against a Budget that puts record investment into the NHS.

[Ed Davey]

We saw what happened to the last Government when they failed to improve the NHS, and if the Prime Minister is not careful, that will happen to his Government.

Last month I asked the Prime Minister to get a grip of South East Water, which had left thousands of people in Royal Tunbridge Wells without water. Now it has happened again, not only in Tunbridge Wells but in East Grinstead, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and other parts of Kent and Sussex. Families, pensioners, schools, care homes and businesses have been without any water since Saturday, and the water company bosses involved now stand accused of misleading Parliament over their failures. South East Water keeps failing its customers over and over again, so will the Government immediately strip it of its licence?