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Heated exchanges at prime minister’s questions as Labour leader says PM ‘can’t be trusted’ with health service David Cameron has launched a scathing attack on the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, after being put on the back foot over the NHS. Miliband continued his strategy of challenging Cameron on policy detail at prime minister’s questions, asking him to state the cost of NHS redundancies before revealing the figure of £852m. The Labour leader then asked the prime minister to guarantee that none of those pocketing redundancy payments would be rehired in one of the hundreds of new bodies set to be created as a result of the NHS reforms. But Cameron sought to steer the debate away from health and on to the union strikes due to be staged on Thursday. He accused Miliband of choosing not to ask him about the forthcoming industrial disruption because he was in the “pocket of the unions”. “That’s what we see, week after week – he has to talk about the micro because he can’t talk about the macro,” the prime minister said. “What the whole country will have noticed is, at a time when people are worrying about strikes, he can’t ask about strikes because he is in the pocket of the unions.” The heated atmosphere prompted the Speaker, John Bercow, to appeal to MPs to “calm down and reflect on what the public thinks of this sort of behaviour”. Cameron was forced on the defensive after Miliband rattled off a list of new NHS organisations which he said would see the total number of NHS bodies grow from 163 to 521, despite a promised cull of quangos by the government. These included “pathfinder consortia, health and wellbeing boards, shadow commissioning groups, authorised commissioning groups, a national commissioning board, PCT clusters, SHA clusters, clinical networks and clinical senates”, Miliband said, adding: “Is this what you meant by a bonfire of the quangos?” Cameron said £5bn was being saved through the reduction of bureaucracy, and that the government was implementing the £20bn cost savings set out by Labour. “The difference is … we are going on with putting more money into the NHS, money that the party opposite doesn’t support, so there will be more nurses, more doctors, more operations in our health service and a better NHS compared with cuts from the party opposite,” he said. Miliband again asked him whether staff made redundant would be rehired “to do their old jobs at your new quangos”. Cameron said: “I know that you have this extraordinary vision of how the NHS is run, but it’s not the prime minister who hires every person in every organisation in the NHS.” The Labour leader said people would notice that Cameron “could not be trusted with the NHS”. “Isn’t the truth [that] he promised no top-down reorganisations, he is doing it,” Miliband said. “He promised a bonfire of the quangos; he’s creating more. He promised a better deal for patients, and things are getting worse. What people are asking up and down this country is, what is he doing to our NHS?” Cameron steered the debate away from the government’s policies by launching into the Labour party’s links to the trade unions. “What the whole country will have noticed is, at a time when people are worrying about strikes, he can’t ask about strikes because he is in the pocket of the unions,” said Cameron. “What the whole country will have noticed is, at a time when Greece is facing huge problems over its deficit, he can’t talk about Greece because his plan is to make Britain like Greece. “What the whole country will have noticed is, at a time when the economy is the key issue, he can’t talk about the economy because of his ludicrous plan for tax cuts.” Ed Miliband David Cameron Health policy PMQs House of Commons NHS Health Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk