The Sketch: Dodgy dossiers, full ambulances and Third World nurses. It's a mad world

Have you noticed, the political situation is changing faster than at any time in a generation?

The 10-day diary includes some pretty unusual items. We are on the brink of war; nuclear brinkmanship is back. Britain is repudiated by the European leadership, Nato is breaking up and the Prime Minister's latest eye-catching initiative with which he can be personally associated are invasions of Iraq, North Korea and, probably, Iran. Never has credibility been more important, or so lacking. Maybe we're on the brink of some really astonishing change.

Peter Lilley described how he had urged his constituents to trust the Prime Minister's assertions about Saddam Hussein "because he must have had access to intelligence that the general public wasn't allowed to see".

The publication of an intelligence document, Mr Lilley said, which was so thin that 50 per cent of it had been culled from the internet, betrayed that trust. Adam Ingram, standing in for Geoff Hoon, bumbled and fumbled. No one knows what he said.

Downing Street's "dodgy dossier" has undermined public opinion, Bernard Jenkin told the House. "How can the Prime Minister restore personal authority now that he's been so found out?"

Glenda Jackson said it wasn't the dossier that was dodgy but the Government's presentation of it as an intelligence document.

Oh, the Government's presentation.

In health questions, Chris Grayling made the case that ambulances in the West Midlands were often unable to off-load their patients. Hospital managers wouldn't let them into A&E until they could be sure of getting them out within the government target of four hours. There had been a report of a 414-minute wait from one ambulance. We needed Early Day Motion 685 at this point. This claims that the Health minister David Lammy had called the heads of the ambulance service to London and instructed them not to speak publicly about this matter but to refer all inquiries to his department's press office.

Mr Lammy's defence at the dispatch box was pathetic and pitiful. "I'll have to ask the hon member not to run down the hardworking ambulance service men and women," he said with a little twitch of, what? Guilt? He said ambulances had no incentive to wait outside hospitals because their target was to unload patients within 15 minutes. As this actually confirmed Mr Grayling's claim, it will be amazing to see Mr Lammy in post after six months are up.

Liam Fox found out that the Government had only a quarter of the number of GPs it needs to make its national health plan work, that GP vacancies had risen by 70 per cent in a year and that applications for the places had halved. The Health minister John Hutton told Dr Fox to stop talking down the NHS.

Evan Harris asked why, if all the government targets for nurse recruitment had been met, the NHS was spending half a billion pounds on agency nurses.

Mr Hutton was then accused of swiping nurses from developing countries. Mr Hutton said: "This Government does not actively recruit nurses from the Third World, nor use agencies that actively recruit from the Third World."

On government standards of truth-telling, this virtually boasts that vast numbers of NHS nurses are from the Third World. The thin drizzle outside the House was the result of angels weeping.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com