Yahoo News Prime Minister's Questions: Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May's claims fact checked
Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have clashed over the state of the NHS at this week's Prime Minister's Questions.
The Telegraph has teamed up with Full Fact to check the claims made by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
This week, the debate covered how safe the NHS with its current level of funding. Corbyn argued that nine out of 10 NHS Trusts are unsafe, while the Prime Minister responded with figures saying that 54 per cent of hospital trusts are considered good or outstanding.
On the condition of NHS trusts
“Her Government has put the NHS and social care in a state of emergency. Nine out of ten NHS trusts are unsafe” Jeremy Corbyn
“I have to say to the Right Honourable Gentleman that he should consider correcting the record because 54% of hospital trusts are considered good or outstanding, quite different from the figure that he has shown” Theresa May
Jeremy Corbyn was referring to research by the BBC which found that 137 of the 152 hospital trusts in England had more than the recommended number of beds occupied between 1 December 2016 and 22 January 2017. That does work out as nine out of 10 trusts.
Hospitals are meant to try and ensure no more than 85 per cent of their beds are occupied at any one time. Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, has said: "There is strong evidence that bed occupancy rates above 85 per cent can compromise patient safety, increasing the risk of infection".
The BBC explained its analysis to us and it seems reasonable. It calculates occupancy per weekday, per trust. It’s possible to do that using the published figures although we haven’t had time to verify them exactly.
There were only three days between 1 December and 22 January when the percentage of beds occupied across the whole of England fell below 85 per cent, according to analysis by the King’s Fund, a health think tank.
The Prime Minister was referring to the results of inspections carried out by the Care Quality Commission, the watchdog for health and social care. It rated 56 per cent of hospitals in England as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ as of July 2016.
So while both Corbyn and May quoted their figures more or less correctly, these are two quite different ways of assessing hospital standards.
The CQC told us that while it does look at figures like the bed occupancy ones Mr Corbyn was quoting before it inspects a hospital, they won’t inform the result of its inspection. For example, if a hospital had consistently high bed occupancy rates, this issue would be looked at during an inspection. But it would only be reflected in the final result for the hospital if inspectors thought it was concerning during their visit.
Having said that, the CQC does mention high bed occupancy rates in its overall assessment of the state of health in England, but this was only one of a number of factors it said were "challenging" the system.
