PMQs as-it-happened
11:52 – Morning, it's PMQs time again. Usual caveats – I'll make many typos and hideous factual inaccuracies. Kick-off is in seven minutes.
11:58 – Stephen Crabb, Welsh minister, is looking particularly dashing today. This, by the way, is the penultimate session before the summer break. You see? Not long to go now. It's almost over.
12:00 – Paul Flynn is making a sound point about private sector contractors, although he looks like Santa Clause if he just found Mrs Clause with another man. Crabb just said "he'll take no lessons from the previous…." You can guess the rest. Tepid.
12:01 – Ok here we go.
12:02 – Cameron pays tribute to all those involved in the Tour de France. It showcased the best of Yorkshire, apparently. The N.Ireland quality commission, Gregory Campbell says, is attacking a bakery for not printing a political message at variance of their religious values. I bet that story is stacked-up nonsense. I know nothing about it of course, but it sounds like tosh.
12:04 – Caroline Spelman wants the PM to welcome the German choir who've come to Westminster. Our esteemed colleague Alex Stevenson is doing a Radio 4 documentary about this by the way. Quick little plug there. Cameron makes a funny about the football last night, saying "they'll be in good voice". Miliband is up. Jeers accompany him.
12:05 – Miliband was "proud" to be watching the Tour de France on the streets apparently. He moves onto child abuse. Victims are owed an apology for how long it took for them to be heard. All inquiries must go wherever the evidence points them, to any institution, including Westminster. Cameron agrees, obviously. He says the horror is how much people thought they could get away with.
12:16 – When were ministers informed of the 114 missing files? The new review must have full investigative powers, he says, and not just be a review of a review. Cameron says it was raised in a parliamentary question last year. He says it has full powers. Miliband says the most important thing is to establish why the files went missing. Now he asks about the overarching inquiry. Will the PM back making the covering up of abuse a criminal offence?
12:08 – "It may well be time to take that sort of step forward" Cameron says. Very telling. He's on the ropes on this, and would accept almost any proposal, I suspect. It's a good time for child advocates to lobby, that's for sure. Cameron says the panel review into sex abuse among British institutions will be effective and is the right vehicle. Miliband welcomes it.
12:09 – Miliband shifts to the NHS all of a sudden. He cites the House of Commons library report questioning what he did with the stats. Cameron insists he was right. He says the shadow health secretary wrongly contradicted him. Now he starts hammering away with stats. It's not very edifying, but Cameron won't take the knock on this. He's well prepared and well supported by his backbenchers. He actually ignores what the House of Commons library blog said, which is that he was using counter-intuitive and silly A&E benchmarks. "Let's go to the common sense definition of what…" Miliband tries, but he can't finish. Too much noise.
12:11 – He says the common sense definition is not between arrival and assessment, but arrival and leaving. "Why won't he admit the truth?" Cameron says his figures were absolutely correct. He evades frantically. "We can trade statistics across the floor of the House and I'm absolutely clear the NHS is getting better," the PM shouts. He doesn't address the issue of why the waiting times only last until assessment.
12:12 – "We had a top down reorganisation that no-one wanted and no-one voted for," Miliband says. "People are spending longer in A&E. While he tries to pretend things are getting better, patients and NHS staff can see it's getting worse in front of their eyes." Cameron goes on a savage attack against Andy Burnham, saying he presided over Mid Staffs. Then he suddenly calms down, pauses, and launches into an attack on Labour's policy on strikes. This is where he wanted to be. He reads from Labour's internal sheet on tomorrow's strike. Does the party support strikes? No. Will it condemn them? No. And that is Labour all over, he says.
12:15 – Snap verdict: Cameron: 1 Miliband: 2 That was awful. They were both awful, Miliband just wins it because he was being marginally less disingenuous. However, the Labour leader rushed through his questions and bizarrely attached a series of NHS questions to one on sex abuse. It's not clear why he even asked about sex abuse. The questions were silly and asking for information already in the public domain. But it was not as bad as Cameron's response to the A&E waiting questions. This is a clear case of misleading the public, using a demented assessment of waiting times which no normal person would understand in order to cook the figures. So Miliband wins. Although it's not a good win by any means.
12:20 – Barbera Keeley, Labour MP, asks about a carer of someone with dementia struggling to get a GP appointment. It sounds planted but actually it may not be. Cameron says there are more GPs than before he was PM. And they've introduced the named GP system for older people. It's all very boring at the moment. More than usual, I mean. Keith Vaz is up. Each day 179 British girls are at risk of female genital mutilation, he says. Cameron gives a good answer of wiping out early forced marriage and FGM.
12:26 – Stephen Phillips, Con, kept together by his clothes, but only just, says the shadow chancellor wants to borrow more money blah blah blah. "No more and no less than a long term economic scam". Christ above. Just one more week of this. Kevin Barron, Lab, like a horrible memory of school dinners, says only the Tories think the NHS is working. Cameron says the NHS faces pressures, but the question is how we respond. He suggests his response was about funding and reform.
12:29 – Mark Reckless, Con, android version of Mark Lawson, asks about files on MPs held by whips. Cameron doesn't understand what he's referring to (neither do I). He calls it delphic. I don't know what that means either. Mysterious?
12:31 – Albert Owen, Lab, from Ynys Mon – you've got to love Welsh names – asks the PM to stop attacking Wales at every opportunity and "who knows, he might even get a welcome on a hillside". Is that a Welsh euphemism? Michael Fabricant, Con, you know him, asks about a deal around Birmingham which will open up new transport links. Cameron, as ever, seems somewhat irritated by him. I'm told delphic "means he thinks the question is especially vague or obtuse", by the way.
12:36 – Cameron is really getting on his high horse about tomorrow's strike. "How can it possibly be right for our children's educations to be disrupted by unions acting in that way [lower strike turnout]. It's time to legislate and it'll be in the Conservative manifesto." Well, it definitely won't happen then.
12:37 – Ok, that's that. And more than enough of it. See you next week.
