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Department of Health

Has the right hon. Gentleman, who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Health, considered applying the same principle to PCTs more widely, not just to the cost of individual procedures, instead of perhaps finding reasons that are associated with poor management, which is the direction in which he appears to be steering? I think that that is the theme that he is developing. His assumption presupposes that funding is provided evenly across all trusts and meets need. Does he accept that there may be circumstances where acute deficits are occurring because the funding formula does not properly reflect need?