Prime Minister's Questions: the Welsh angles

It's official title is "oral questions to the prime minister" but today question time was more about Labour.

The news that a Labour government wouldn't reverse child benefit cuts it opposed engaged David Cameron rather more than the questions he faced.

The prime minister tried several times to engage the Labour leader on the subject, without success.

Mr Miliband - whose role in this event is to ask rather than answer the questions - wanted to ask about the NHS in England.

David Cameron chose to focus his answers on the NHS in Wales. He said the Welsh government hadn't met its target for waiting times in A and E units since 2009.

"If people want to know what is going wrong with the NHS under Labour now, they only need to look at Wales. At Wales, where they haven't met any of their targets, where they cut the NHS by eight per cent, that is the effect of Labour in Wales."

Ed Miliband didn't respond to that either, but his shadow Welsh secretary did, via twitter. Owen Smith denounced "another disgraceful attempt by the PM to divert attention from Tory failure to sustain the NHS in England by misrepresenting NHS Wales.

"The reality is that Labour has maintained the NHS Wales budget at 6.4bn - despite Tory cuts to the overall Welsh budget of 1.4n."

One man's freeze may be another man's cut, but Mr Smith added: "A further reality of NHS Wales is that we're not selling off the NHS in Wales, or cutting nurses or closing any A and E."

Welsh interest in PMQs today wasn't confined to the exchanges between the leaders of the two biggest parties at Westminster. Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards used a rare opportunity to question the prime minister to ask Mr Cameron this question:

"Thatcher said that her greatest achievement was new Labour. Given the treacherous decision to commit to Tory spending plans, is the prime minister's greatest achievement one-nation Labour?"

Mr Cameron's brief response? "I hope I can do better than that."

You can read the full exchanges here.