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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), who is a former Treasury Minister and therefore speaks with some authority on these subjects. I was disappointed that he said nothing about a subject that he knows even more about—the national health service, on which the Budget has been remarkably silent—and I want to put a specific question to the ministerial team. All hon. Members are worried about the implications of the NHS funding crisis, and I want to make a specific point to which the Minister may be able to reply by 10 o’clock. One of the Government’s great achievements in health has been the roll-out of cancer screening—a major challenge to which there has been a huge response. The next step, which was to start in three days’ time at the beginning of the financial year, was to begin a programme of bowel cancer screenings—something long awaited by people in the cancer campaigning world. Stories have been reported in the press and to me by a leading charity in the field that, at the very last moment, the programme has been pulled because of financial difficulties in the Department of Health. I wonder whether the Minister could set my mind at rest on that issue this evening.