HC Deb 03 November 1988 vol 139 cc1250-60

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dorrell.]

8.24 pm
Sir Peter Hordern (Horsham)

Not long ago, I received a letter from 20 doctors in the Horsham and Crawley area telling me that 60 beds were out of action in the Horsham and Crawley hospitals; that the theatre operating lists had been cut by a quarter; and that most waiting lists had grown by over 20 per cent. The main reason for the shortfall in performance was the nursing shortage, which itself was due, in part, to the cost of housing but also to the lack of employees because of the full employment in our area.

The hospitals are short not only of nursing staff but also of ancillary and office staff—perhaps even more than they are short of nursing and midwifery staff. Furthermore, although the number of people aged over 75 is rising throughout the country, the number of school leavers is falling. That represents a severe challenge in the future —indeed, in the immediate future. There are now fewer young nurses to look after an increasing number of elderly and sick people. That is the reality.

The letter from those doctors in Horsham told me that Horsham hospital is frequently full and closed to admissions. When I received the letter I made some inquiries of the Mid-Downs health authority, which sent me a full reply. I found that the rolls were short in the following ways: administrative and clerical staff by 12.5 per cent.; ancillary staff by 21.8 per cent.; nursing and midwifery staff by 7.6 per cent.; and works and maintenance staff by 25.8 per cent.

The district has 125 beds temporarily closed in the acute sectors, largely due to those staffing shortages. The situation is particularly acute at Crawley hospital, where waiting lists have risen by an average of 15 to 20 per cent.

I know that my hon Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) is keenly interested in this debate and he has asked me to mention those facts because, like me, he is waiting for the Minister's reply, which I know he will study with great interest in Hansard.

The acute shortage of staff in virtually every area of hospital staffing is made worse by the rapid turnover in labour. I am told that the turnover of administrative and clerical staff is 23.5 per cent.; for ancillary staff it is over 50 per cent.; for nursing and midwifery it is 19.8 per cent.; and for works and maintenance staff 20 per cent. Not only is turnover expensive—I believe that an additional £2,500 to £3,500 has to be paid for each additional employee; it is also disruptive in terms of the training that needs to be carried out.

In Crawley—my constituency is in the same travel-to-work area—vacancies exceed the number of unemployed people at the moment. Of course, that is a happy position to be in but when it comes to recruiting extra staff for the Health Service, real difficulties must be resolved. The effect of such competition in employment has been to increase pay rates. The Mid-Downs health authority is now adrift in comparison with the local employment market by as much as 50 per cent. in some categories. I do not know which categories are the worst, but I would expect that they are the ancillary and clerical departments.

Another factor which must be taken into account is the cost of property for nurses and ancillary workers. In my area a two-bedroomed flat costs over £70,000. The minimum salary to support a mortgage of that level would be about £15,000, which is well beyond the reach of single staff in nursing and other professions.

What can be done about that situation? The Mid-Downs health authority has an innovative scheme for providing low-cost accommodation for single staff with a housing association on its own land. That proposition is being studied by both the Department and the Treasury. If the health authority is to be able to recruit, it must offer accommodation in addition to the necessary level of pay.

In other areas of employment, such as in business, it is the custom to recruit people and then provide them with a form of tied accommodation. Some time ago it was the Government's policy to permit tenants to purchase their own accommodation within the health authority. In so far as that arrangement worked, it tended to exacerbate an already difficult situation. When one considers that health authorities are exempt from normal planning procedures, one sees that, if they are successfully to recruit the necessary staff, they must be able to offer suitable accommodation within their own grounds. I know that the matter is being looked at by my hon. Friend the Minister and her Department, and by the Treasury. It needs their sympathetic consideration, if health authorities are to have a realistic chance of recruiting the staff they require.

One must not forget, either, the reduction in the number of school leavers and the multiplicity of jobs available to them. I refer to a particularly favoured part of the country; the same situation is not true of others. However, there is no reason why the Mid-Downs health authority or my part of Sussex should be any less well treated than other areas. Regional pay variations are absolutely necessary, in addition to any special efforts that might be made to provide residential accommodation. Pay variations are essential if we are to solve the problem. That applies not only to nurses but to ancillary workers, technicians and other staff.

Yesterday, by coincidence, I received a copy of a letter from Worthing district health authority, as part of my constituency is in its area. That authority is almost as badly off in respect of recruiting as Mid-Downs. The letter was directed at my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health. Worthing is going through an extremely difficult time in trying to recruit the number of people that it needs. As to pay variations, I believe that my hon. Friend and the Government accept in principle that there should be regional variations according to supply and demand. Pay variations are accepted in the Civil Service in the form of the London weighting allowance, and in other parts of south-east England, in business and industry.

In Sussex, there are rent allowances for the police. The payment of such allowances and compensatory grants to Sussex police officers now exceeds £4 million per annum, and about 80 per cent. of all officers now live in their own homes and therefore are entitled to a rent allowance. If that can be done for one part of the public sector, it can be done for another. Careful consideration should be given to any scheme that can be arranged to overcome the severe shortage of nurses and other trained people required in the Health Service. The police scheme appears to be a good one. In Sussex, we are not short of the number of police we are permitted to recruit; we are short of the establishment of police required. I commend that system of allowances in the police force as an example of what might be done in the Health Service.

It is not enough to say that there can be regional pay variations for people who work for the Mid-Downs or Worthing health authority, but that they must expect the extra cost to come out of budgets granted by the regional health authority. It must be recognised that pay differential costs should be included in the regional health authorities' budgets. Even so, the case for that would not be made unless one could plainly show a relative disadvantage in manning in the Mid-Downs area compared with other parts of the country.

I have the advantage, because I have two letters written to me by my hon. Friend the Minister—one more than a year ago, the other much more recently. In these matters, it is important to be sure of the statistics. I must admit at once that I have run into considerable difficulty. I regret to say that the Health Service—this has been the subject of many PAC reports—is not very good at providing up-to-date statistics.

When my hon. Friend wrote to me on 1 December 1987, she stated: I accept, however, that there is concern about the need for differential pay increases to reflect differing recruitment patterns in different parts of the country. I would certainly not rule out that possibility. But it would be important to target accurately any local premiums and to adopt a selective approach based on a full and up-to-date picture of the staffing position. How very right she is. Just over a year ago, I put down a question to establish what was the relative staffing for nurses and midwifery staff. The figures I received were for the period at 30 September 1986—a year previously. Those figures concerned me because they showed that the South West Thames regional health authority's figure for nursing and midwifery staff was 8.21 per thousand population—the fifth lowest of the 14 regional health authorities.

However, as the Minister says, it is important to have up-to-date information. Imagine my surprise when my hon. Friend told me the other day: Detailed staffing information is collected from the NHS annually on 30 September. Because of the necessity for detailed checking and validating of this data, the final figures are not normally available until some 11 months after the situation date. I dare say that checking and validation are all very well, but what I have wanted to know for a long time is how it is that those manning level figures are so out of date. I agree with my hon. Friend's comment in her earlier letter that it is necessary to have up-to-date information, but how can it be up to date when the fully checked and validated statistics are already 11 months out of date?

The need for a proper system of calculating accurate manpower statistics in the National Health Service is as great now as it ever was. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to do something about that. I may add that the latest figures, which are really one year out of date, show that the South West Thames health authority had an even lower manning ratio of 7.9 per 1,000 population, which makes it the fourth lowest out of the 14 health authorities.

If the resource allocation working party system, which is designed to even out services throughout the country, means anything, those figures show that the south-east of England, and Mid-Downs health authority in particular, needs more nurses—and that attention needs to be paid to the acute shortage of ancillary and secretarial staff as well. It cannot be counted as a satisfactory policy if our region is so very far behind other parts of the country.

I want to emphasise the outstanding improvement in the National Health Service from the extra pay award. I devoutly hope that the increase, which will come through soon, will have a marked impact. I also welcome the huge increase in resources for the Health Service as a whole. That does not, however, invalidate the case for a regional pay policy: without such a policy, we shall not have equality of health treatment throughout the country. It is essential that a district health authority is not treated unfavourably because it happens to be in a regional health authority that has a London teaching hospital in its area.

This is a particularly vexed question. I have not been able to have a conversation with the regional health authority about it recently as the directors were not available, so I shall have to deal with it without their guidance. The truth as seen by the district health authorities is that the regional health authority has to spend a good deal on the teaching hospital—in the South West Thames authority it is St. George's—because it is new and very expensive. I believe—I hope that the Health Service review will accommodate this—that there is a strong case for taking all the London teaching hospitals together and not extending them so that they have a marked influence on the position in other parts of the country, as is the case in our region.

What we have found so unsatisfactory in the cases of both the Mid-Downs and Worthing health authorities is that money that should have been transferred to those health authorities has been extended to St. George's because it happens to be in our region. I dare say that it is all to do with not handing over resources too quickly, but my authority and Worthing have suffered because money has been handed over very tardily, if at all.

We have been accustomed to regional health authorities for some time. They draw up their own budgets and work out their capital expenditure and spending programmes, and I know that it is all done very carefully. To an outsider, however, it is extraordinary that a health authority should contemplate building a major hospital within two miles of an existing one. A visitor from abroad, if told that it was the policy of a regional health authority to take no notice of the presence of a satisfactory hospital in the neighbouring region which could be extended and to put up a brand new one within two or three miles, would conclude that we must be mad—as indeed we must be. But there is a proposal, which I believe is still under study, to construct a brand new hospital at Hove, within three miles of the existing Worthing hospital.

If there were no RHAs to compete with one another —if initiatives came from the ground—that could never happen. Alternatives could be provided. RHAs could say, "We wish to improve the facilities in other hospitals in our region now that we know that there is an existing general hospital within two or three miles of this one."

This affects my constituents particularly. We shall not have the facilities that we would have had if people had not taken leave of their senses in a peculiarly important matter. It is no small sum that the South-West Thames regional health authority proposes to spend. If only the two regions would talk to each other, things would go much more merrily, but what looks likely is a considerable waste of money.

I have given notice to no one, but this is not the first time that I have taken the matter up with the Department, and I shall continue to do so. As a matter of interest, I have sent the correspondence to the Comptroller and Auditor General, whose excellent report we have just been discussing. I hope that, if the RHA is seriously proposing to build the new hospital at Hove, it is aware that the CAG will be observing any transaction with the greatest interest, because it can only be concluded that it is a significant waste of public money, and the sooner it is turned down the better.

I must apologise in advance to my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) for not informing him that I was going to say this, and I shall draw his attention to it in Hansard tomorrow. Nevertheless, he and I both know what is involved, and I think it absolutely necessary that we make the best and most economic use of our resources. These matters are much too important for rivalries to be allowed between one RHA and another. We must not only practise economy but devise a sensible system that will allow satisfactory facilities and increased pay on a regional basis in the way that I have described.

8.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mrs. Edwina Currie)

Let me start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern) on his success in the ballot. He is a doughty fighter for his consituents, and I commend his example to other, newer colleagues. They could do no better than follow his unfailingly courteous, thoughtful and constructive approach. I say that with some feeling, having listened to one or two other speeches from the Back Benches on health issues this week.

I note with pleasure what my hon. Friend said about the support given to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames), who also makes representations on Health Service matters in his constituency. I also note the presence of my hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage (Mr. Wood) and for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe)—whose own areas face similar problems —and my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack). I do not think that the manpower problem has hit Blackpool yet, but no doubt it will.

It is a delight to see my very dear friend the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) who always graces the Chamber, and with such pleasure, when I am around. He is the only Member of the House who has offered me a personal compliment when I have been answering questions from the Dispatch Box. I am eternaly in his debt for that, and I shall not allow him to forget it either.

My hon. Friend the Member for Horsham has given the House the opportunity to discuss an important aspect of Health Service management, namely the need to recruit and retain staff in an increasingly competitive environment. The greatest asset of the NHS is its staff, and our ability to recruit and retain staff is crucial to the delivery of high-quality care. It is a measure of my hon. Friend's dedicated care for his constituents that he recognises that. He has, as he said, been in contact with Ministers in recent months about nurse staffing in the South West Thames region and the important points that he has raised about our pattern of knowledge of employment in the Health Service in general.

I am sure that my hon. Friend is looking to the near future, when the brand new 300-bed district general hospital will open at Haywards Heath. It will be known as the Mid-Sussex hospital. Of course there are considerable implications for staffing it: I am told that 30 extra trained nurses will probably be needed, partly because although this is a replacement hospital there will be more beds and partly because the design—as it is no longer Nightingale ward—will require more staff.

My hon. Friend spoke about employment data. It is worth remembering—this is no reproach to my hon. Friend—that the Health Service is the largest employer in western Europe, and that some 1.25 million names appear on its payroll. Any employment data that we might collect are bound to take some time to sort out. It is not simply a question of pushing a button on the computer and finding out how many staff we have. However, the computers are now in place, and—as I said in my correspondence with my hon. Friend—opportunities are arising to produce the information far more accurately and rapidly in future. Our slight difficulty at present is that the very process of generating for the first time the new data known as the Korner data is taking up an enormous amount of time and in itself is producing a delay, and I can only apologise to my hon. Friend.

Worldwide, we stand as one of the great employers. I understand that only the Indian railways and the Red Army are larger employers than the NHS, and if General Secretary Gorbachev is successful in some of the things that he is getting up to, the Red Army will end up smaller than the NHS—certainly if we continue to recruit at the rate of the recent past.

My hon. Friend asked about the review of the Health Service led by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I am sure that he realises that I cannot say much about it, but he has made some sensible points and I shall ensure that they are drawn to the attention of the members of that review group.

My hon. Friend also asked about resource allocation working party money and how it is allocated among the districts. We agree that it is not allocated fast enough and that we need better systems to ensure that the allocation reflects the pattern of care that has developed in the neighbourhood, perhaps without freezing for ever that pattern of care. I am told that most RAWP money is out of Wandsworth as a result of changes at St. George's and that about £500,000 is to come out next year, starting in April. Mid-Downs health authority is set to gain significantly.

My hon. Friend mentioned district general hospitals at Worthing, Southlands and Hove. I should like to stress that no decision has been taken although, like him, I hope that one will not be too long delayed. The proposal is receiving careful study and the arguments that my hon. Friend advanced are foremost in our mind. The content of the proposed new hospital will be studied carefully to ensure that there is no duplication.

It is worth remembering that, on the south coast, in several health authority areas, more than one quarter of the population is now over 65, and their number is set to rise. They are heavy users of hospital services. We must take account of the fact that the pattern of care will have to respond to the pattern of need. I noticed that when I visited Eastbourne yesterday, where about 27 per cent. of the population is elderly. Some of the advice that I tried to give was that we must try to gear services to the people the service is looking after now and those it is likely to look after in future, although when the Health Service was established there were relatively few elderly people. The pattern of care 40 years ago was very different.

South West Thames regional health authority, in common with other Thames regions, faces pressure on recruitment and retention. One would expect that from their geographical position. The nurse staffing ratios show that South West Thames is in a relatively poor position. That is why, in my review in February this year of the region's performance, the subject was a major item on the agenda. The discussion that we had then gave rise to a number of specific pieces of action to which the regional health authority has given attention since. For example, we asked it to report to us on wastage rates and on intakes of nurse learners to ensure that the pattern of the most basic education is integrated properly with manpower requirements and financial resources. It is no good planning to train people if one has neither the money to train them nor the money to employ them at some stage. We asked it to make reports to us by 30 September on its mechanisms for identifying and correcting problems and to ensure that the pattern of nurse training schools is in line with recommendations of its education strategy. We have just received that report.

So far, what we have got is an excellent analysis of the region's nursing situation. An analysis is one thing—it is substantial: there are pages and pages of it—action is another. We have therefore put the subject on the agenda again for this year's review of the regional health authority and my Department will monitor progress closely.

It is no longer good enough for us to say that such and such a region or health authority needs more nurses. The pattern of demography is such that, in the south-east, we may be employing virtually everyone that is available. There may not be a pool of people from which we can draw additional nurses, physiotherapists, operating department assistants or any other group.

We are already the largest employer in the country. We are almost certainly the largest employer in most districts. It follows, therefore, that it will not be enough simply to say, "We need more nurses." I have put this point strongly in every regional review that I have done recently—we must consider retaining the staff we have and managing the career break much more effectively, particularly as the majority of staff are women, many of them young women, and many of them married with young children. We must look much more closely at the skill mix to ensure that the staff we can recruit are able to take up as much of the work as is appropriate for their level of training.

Even more important, we must ensure that we get some upskilling. In other words, if we have dedicated staff who have not for various reasons been able to train, we may have to develop schemes to enable them to do that. Many of those whom we employ are women and women traditionally have not taken up their education opportunities when they had the chance. I feel quite strongly that we should follow up, as far as we can, the opportunities to enable our staff to improve themselves and therefore the employment position of health authorities.

The Mid-Downs health authority, which covers my hon. Friend's constituency, operates in an employment market which is about as competitive as any in the country. It shares its pool of labour with other employers such as Gatwick airport. There is full employment. Crawley and the surrounding travel-to-work area has the lowest rate of unemployment in the country, at 2.1 per cent. That puts pressure on all sorts of things including wage and housing costs.

I am extremely interested in this topic and I have done some homework on it. The next lowest level of unemployment—2.5 per cent.—is to be found at Winchester and Eastleigh. That puts Crawley in some difficulty. I asked the Department of Employment to give me an age analysis of unemployed people. I have the figures for 14 July 1988, which covers the Crawley travel-to-work area, which is not quite the same as Crawley town, but it covers the health authority area pretty well. It is a depressing picture for anybody hoping to recruit more staff.

The total number of people aged 18 and under unemployed for one year or more and who might therefore be regarded as available was 10. Aged 19 and under, that figure increased to 21. There were fewer than 4,000 people on the entire register. The total number of people aged 19 or under from whom we might expect to recruit was 110, of whom more than half had been unemployed for eight weeks or less, and were presumably between jobs. There is no pool of labour in that area. We should not, therefore, be surprised to find vacancies in the health authority.

I should like to give my hon. Friend a flavour of the health authority's vacancies as they are not as bad as in other areas, which suggests that Mid-Downs is a good employer and doing a good job at retaining staff, but nor are they entirely consistent, which is rather curious. The establishment for nurses and midwives is 1,872, and the number in post at 30 September 1988 was 1,730. That means that 142 posts are unfilled, which gives a vacancy rate of 8 per cent. The main gaps are in qualifed staff, especially in orthopaedics, registered sick children's nurses, intensive care units, theatres—including operative department assistants—and premature baby units.

The Mid-Downs health authority shares this problem with many other health authorities in the south-east, although, according to some indicators, the nurse employment pattern is not too bad. For example, the turnover and wastage rates for nurses are both better than the regional average. In 1987–88, the authority's wastage rate for qualified nursing midwifery staff was 17 per cent. of total staff in post. In Worthing and south-west Surrey, it was 23 per cent., so Mid-Downs is obviously losing fewer people. The number of long-stay staff who have been with the authority for more than a year is 88 per cent. of total staff in post. That is far higher than, for example, in south-west Surrey, where the figure is 74 per cent. The authority is therefore managing to keep its staff.

Nurses are not the most problematic staff group in Mid-Downs. At the end of September, the health authority had a shortfall of almost 22 per cent. in ancillary staff, 12.5 per cent. in administrative and clerical staff and 25 per cent. in works and maintenance staff, compared with 8 per cent. in nursing. Perhaps its establishments for some of these other types of activity are too high. I find it hard to believe that a health authority can function properly when it is down by a quarter on its maintenance staff and by almost the same figure on its ancillary staff, but it may he coping reasonably well on that.

It is interesting to note that medical and dental staff are well over establishment. I too saw the letter written by GPs and want to put on record the fact that the health authority believes it needs 193 medical and dental staff. It has almost 203 staff—that is, in whole-time equivalents —which means that it has 9.52 more people, again in whole-time equivalents, than it has 9.52 more people, again in whole-time equivalents, than it needs. That is 5 per cent. over establishment. At a rough guess, that is probably worth about £200,000 a year. If it is not, I stand to be corrected, but that is rather a lot of money for the recruitment of new doctors when the authority needs more nurses.

Sir Peter Hordern

My hon. Friend is right. I suspect that my figures come from the same source. However, my information goes on to state that the extra people are explained by an addition of directly employed locum staff to cover sickness, holiday and maternity leave. My hon. Friend is right in saying that the authority might save £200,000 by not having those staff, but are they to have no holiday, sickness or maternity leave?

Mrs. Currie

So far as I understand it, the data are collected in roughly the same way for all staff and I therefore wonder whether the shortfall in the other staff includes those staff mentioned by my hon. Friend. I merely put that on the record as I know that this debate will be read with great interest by Mid-Downs health authority tomorrow. The letter that the GPs sent to the local newspaper stated:

Surgeons and anaesthetists are finding spare time on their hands because over 25 per cent. of the operating sessions are cancelled, again largely due to nurse shortages. I wonder why, therefore, the authority is employing locums. I simply put that fact on the record; I do not criticise the authority. However, it does not seem quite right that it has more doctors than it needs but does not have as many other staff that it needs. If those figures are accurate, as I am led to believe, I hope that it will try to put that matter right.

The authority has taken the sad step of closing beds because of nurse shortages. That has a general effect on activity levels. I caution my hon. Friend about using performance indicators which are available in the Library because they refer to 1986–87. They show that the total nursing staff in the acute sector is, at 1.13 per bed, closer to the national average of 1.15. However, those figures are probably now out of date and I promise my hon. Friend that the latest data will be available as soon as possible.

I am told that the authority is dependent upon bank and agency nurses. At 30 September, it was employing 87 agency staff and bank staff out of a total nursing establishment of 1,100 qualified staff. It spends between 5 per cent. and 8 per cent. of its £17 million nursing services budget on agency and bank staff.

The health authority had to make some efforts to find those figures. I cannot tell my hon. Friend exactly how much it spends on agency staff alone, but it does not appear to be very much if the total amount that it spends on bank and agency staff is between 5 and 8 per cent. I am not as troubled about the use of bank nurses because they are Health Service staff and using one's own bank is a sensible way of enabling staff who do not want to work full time to come in when they are available.

However, I wish to put on record my dissatisfaction that senior officers of the authority did not have this information easily to hand when I asked them for it this afternoon. They did not know how many agency staff they employed or how much they spent on agency staff and were not able to give me the figures. The figures that I was given were for agency and bank staff and they are not the same thing. I met Mrs. Tovey, the district nurse adviser, and Mr. Peter Catchpole, the district general manager, today. I asked them a string of questions to which they should have had the answers, but they did not. I put that on record because it is appropriate for those managers to be asking those questions and to have those answers.

There is some evidence of an imaginative management response from the district. It has recently produced, as required by the region, a strategy for the recruitment and retention of staff. My officials tell me that this is a comprehensive and, in many ways, imaginative document. So far, it is still a document. It proposes action, much of which is already under way, and there are about 30 points in total. These include improvements in working conditions, including the provision of a creche, which I understand is already running. Another point is the improving of arrangements for collecting information on manpower. As my hon. Friend will realise, there is some feeling of soreness about that. Another point is recruitment campaigns, including job fairs and the reviewing of recruitment literature. Some of the literature is good. The health authority is discussing preferential mortgage terms. I understand that it has been recruiting in other countries. I understand also that one of the proposals before it is to revert to having matrons. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have a view on whether that is desirable.

I have collected a good deal of other data on the Mid-Downs health authority, and I shall be glad to share it with my hon. Friend. It occurs to me that it might be more helpful if I were to include some of it in a letter. Having been critical about the health authority, I am aware that there may be further discussions during the next day or two on how it will come to terms with the criticism and cope with it.

In my judgment, it is not good enough that the authority should divert the resources that it had for nurse training to other things and then be surprised that the English national board should stop its nurse training altogether. It is not good enough that it should not know how many staff it employs, nor how the balancing of the budget is worked out between its own staff and agency staff, overtime and so forth. There is a great deal that the Government are doing, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will be aware of it. This includes a central recruitment campaign for nursing, which was successful during August. We may well run the campaign during the winter.

Sir Peter Hordern

My hon. Friend will recall that I spoke of a scheme that the health authority would like to put into effect. It involves the development on its own land of quarters for its nursing staff. Could she give that scheme a fair wind?

Mrs. Currie

I must apologise to my hon. Friend for overlooking that issue. It was discussed this afternoon. As the scheme stands, it involves unconventional finance. I advised the staff that a different approach should be taken so that it involves conventional finance, and then the authority will be able to get on with it. I have asked my officials to visit the staff of the authority to discuss with them exactly how that might be done. Rather than wasting a great deal of time arguing with colleagues about bending or changing the rules, it might well be done within the rules. I hope that that satisfies my hon. Friend.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Nine o'clock.