David Cameron did, as James says, manage to avoid debating the rather more electorally damaging issue of the A&E crisis at Prime Minister’s Questions today because Ed Miliband chose to talk about the TV debates instead. But he still had a good opportunity to raise the Labour leader’s refusal to confirm or deny that he had said he wanted to ‘weaponise’ the NHS as an issue.
When Labour’s Toby Perkins asked him whether he was ashamed of what happens when the Tories run the NHS, Cameron replied:
‘Now he quite rightly says it’s very important that we conduct this debate in a very good and civilised way. Now at the weekend, the leader of the Opposition was asked seven times whether he had used the phrase that he wanted to weaponise the NHS. Seven times he refused to answer the question! Everybody knows that he said those words and if he had a shred of decency in him he would get up and explain he shouldn’t have said those words and apologise!’
This worked particularly well for Cameron because Miliband couldn’t respond either, as these were the backbench questions.
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