---

Department of Health

It is not a calamity at all. The only pressure on my annual home budget is that 0.7 per cent. is on the edge. We do not know whether it will be available for the rest of the year. That is not a calamity. It is just as well that we are going through the process of finding out what the NHS costs while we have a Government who have put so much extra money into the national health service. I have sat on the Opposition Benches when Governments have made real cuts in health expenditure and in other parts of the public sector, too. When we get through the process, as we inevitably will, we must make sure that we know what the NHS costs. In future, annual budgets for hospitals and other parts of the health service must be based on their costs, not on what they would spend if they were given the money. That is crucial to the debate.