---

Department of Health

I do not know exactly what is happening down here, but taking £7.5 million off Rotherham and putting it in reserve—I ought to add that the PCT has been told that it will get the money back at some stage—has not taken away all the growth money. Far from it. My right hon. Friend the Minister knows, and it is probably the same for her constituents, that we are still below the national target for PCT expenditure. We still have room for growth and we will get additional money because we are below the national PCT level. I discussed with Ministers what the turnaround teams are doing in the PCTs that have problems of overspend. I am led to believe, and my right hon. Friend may want to correct me, that they are not just looking at the current overspend and what to do about it—we are all interested in that—but at how it came about. How did some trusts overspend as much as £10 million, £20 million or £30 million, whereas other trusts close by are nowhere near those levels? That will be crucial for learning the lesson from the present problem. The Health Committee will want to study the evidence presented by the turnaround teams to find out what happened. We may want to instigate a debate at some stage about why the problems arose in different ways in different parts of the country, and to find out how we can avoid a situation in which some primary care trusts—it may be a minority—will go through some difficult times in the next few months and years. I am just pleased that we have a Government who have taken on their responsibility and funded expanding health care as they have, so that these difficult problems are not as difficult as they could be.