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Public Health (England)

We could perhaps start with smoking—we talked a bit about smoking, and we will talk about it more—and how that budget has been affected by deficits and the removal of money from the quit smoking campaign in order to sort out parts of the NHS deficit. I will talk about that and will give one or two other examples in my speech, so if the hon. Gentleman will be a little more patient, I might give him some examples that will support the case that I am trying to make. I accept—the Minister was fairly candid on this point—that there is a judgment to be made on whether we continue to fund public health as we have done, or whether we protect it and ring-fence it in some way, just as the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse is protected. The Minister showed that she is under a slight misapprehension about what the agency does, which is a little alarming; it is not simply a Home Office responsibility, but covers a raft of health issues. A large part of that funding is for the treatment and prevention of substance abuse. It would be surprising if the Minister did not understand that.