HC Deb 20 May 1997 vol 294 cc496-7
7. Mr. Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proposals he has for funding the deficits of health authorities. [410]

Mr. Milburn

Health authorities are expected to produce balanced income and expenditure plans, and have a statutory duty to ensure that net expenditure does not exceed their allocated cash limit.

Mr. Mitchell

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment. I am sure that he will agree that the deficits are the results of a malign process carried out by the previous Government—efficiency savings that amounted to a process of anorexia, which forced bed closures, dismissal of nurses and growing waiting lists. The electorate voted on 1 May to end all that. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that it should be an early priority to fund the deficits as soon as possible so that the wasting process can be stopped.

Mr. Milburn

My hon. Friend is right about one thing: we want more money to go into front-line patient services.

He is also right that we were elected on a manifesto commitment to stay within departmental spending targets, and we will do that. If the former Secretary of State can contain himself—I know that he is busy electioneering—I shall continue. We will address the issue of bureaucracy in the national health service, undertake a comprehensive spending review in the Department of Health to ensure that waste and inefficiency are cut out, and deal with the sort of problems that my hon. Friend raises.

Rev. W. Martin Smyth

While I welcome the Minister to his position, may I remind him that the health service is a national health service? Perhaps the Department got the figures wrong at times when it allocated funds to various authorities. Will he have a discussion with his colleague in Northern Ireland, where mythological money was taken from the health service to go into security? As a result, one of the areas at greatest disadvantage in health care has been punished again. Health authorities in Northern Ireland cannot meet their budgets.

Mr. Milburn

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have it in mind to open discussions about some of those issues with my hon. Friends not just in Northern Ireland, but in Wales and Scotland. I also give him an undertaking that we shall consider how resources for both primary and secondary care are distributed to ensure that they fully reflect the health needs of local populations.

Mrs. Anne Campbell

I welcome my hon. Friend to his new position. Is he aware that, to avoid a deficit in funding, the Cambridge and Huntingdon health authority has decided to cut £300,000 from its health visitor service? Does he agree that that is bad news for the early detection of health problems, bad news for the health of schoolchildren who will be affected by the cut, and very bad news for all of my constituents? Will he investigate the matter?

Mr. Milburn

Yes.

Mrs. Browning

The wages bill is the biggest pull on resources in the national health service. What assessment has the hon. Gentleman made of the additional resources required for his minimum wage policy in the NHS?

Mr. Milburn

I would exercise a little caution if I were the hon. Lady, because the Government in which she served stopped collecting the appropriate pay figures for the national health service.