Prime Minister's Questions: The key bits and the verdict

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have gone head-to-head in the first Prime Minister's Questions of 2018. What happened?

Mr Corbyn started the new year the way he ended the last one, with an attack on the government's handling of the health service.

Armed with statistics on the number of people waiting in ambulances outside Accident and Emergency units, he seized on Mrs May's comment to the BBC that "nothing's perfect" when asked about the pressures facing the NHS.

Did she have any "words of comfort" for those affected, he asked?

Mrs May repeated her apology to those who have had planned operations cancelled to cope with the surge in demand, but said the NHS had been better prepared than ever before for the winter pressures.

She then went on the attack, asking the Labour leader to apologise for saying - in a previous PMQs - that mental health budgets had been cut.

Children's mental health budgets have been "raided", Mr Corbyn replied, before moving on to this week's reshuffle and saying that Mrs May had wanted to sack Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt "but was too weak to do it".

Mr Hunt stayed in his post and has a beefed-up job title, with social care added to the name of his department.

Not for the first time, the two leaders continued trading blows on the NHS - Mr Corbyn hammering home his message on the cancelled operations, and Mrs May accusing Labour of "deprioritising" health spending in Wales, where it controls the health service.

After Mr Corbyn said NHS cash was "feathering the nests of shareholders in private health companies", Mrs May - shouting to overcome barracking from the opposition benches - said private sector involvement had increased under Labour.

The Labour leader was not the only MP to raise the NHS - Conservative MP Andrew Murrison suggested a royal commission should be established to look at the future of the service.

It was Mrs May's first Commons appearance since she changed her ministerial line-up, and she was flanked by her new "right hand man" David Lidington, who was given a key role in the place of the sacked Damian Green.

As well as the references to Mr Hunt's position, the sight of former education secretary Justine Greening on the backbenches was a sign that things hadn't gone entirely as planned (she refused a move and quit the government).

There was also an early reference to the "housing secretary", the new job title given to Sajid Javid.

What else came up?

The SNP's Ian Blackford focused on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill and how the UK government plans to repatriate powers from Brussels.

Despite having promised a power "bonanza" for the devolved administration, the bill is "nothing more than a power grab from Scotland", Mr Blackford said.

The UK and Scottish governments are locked in a dispute over what will happen to powers which are currently exercised from Brussels - whether those powers move to Westminster or to the devolved nations after Brexit.

Mrs May said the government was seeking to improve the section of the bill in question, and that the ministers were "intensifying" their discussions with Holyrood.

This week it was confirmed that the proposed changes to the bill had been delayed.

Another SNP MP, Pete Wishart, asked the PM to rank her Brexit efforts on a scale of one to 10 - she replied that the government was "getting on with the job" and he earned a telling-off from John Bercow for holding up a "nul points" sign.

There was also a call from Conservative MP Maria Caulfield for a ban on selling high energy drinks to children as she told MPs about the death of one of her constituents in Lewes.

Mrs May said the government would continue to look at the "scientific evidence".

Passionate embrace?

Not the obvious phrase that comes to mind at PMQs, but that was what the new deputy chairman of the Conservatives, James Cleverly, asked the prime minister to give to her domestic agenda ("not me, don't worry", he told MPs).

"I don't think he's ever had the kiss that he once asked for," Mrs May replied, to laughter.

Wondering what was this all about? It's a long-running joke that dates back to Mr Cleverly's answer to a "snog, marry, avoid" question on BBC Radio 5 live's Pienaar's Politics.

The PM swiftly got PMQs back to the day job by promising the government would "do a lot more than Brexit".

The Verdict

What the pundits said

It's fair to say the watching press gallery was not overly impressed:

And finally

After Prime Minister's Questions finished Speaker John Bercow revealed that there had been one person's question he had really wanted to hear...