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Public Health (England)

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to wrap up the Back-Bench contributions in this extremely good debate. I have very much enjoyed sitting through it. The press lobby called me amiable and chubby. I cannot do much about being amiable, but I decided to do something about being chubby. I went on a diet and now hope that I can keep the weight off. However, I shall not bore the House with my eating habits. I want to stay within the boundaries of a public health debate. If I do not, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you will rule me out of order. I want to link my comments to the cuts in the Hertfordshire health economy. The £50 million savings that we are being asked to make over the next two years will have a fundamental impact on public health provision across the county and in my constituency. We cannot fail to mention per head funding for health. In Hertfordshire it is £900 per head; in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Health it is £1,300 per head, and in parts of Scotland it can be as high as £1,800 per head. There may be very good reasons for those discrepancies, and this is not the place to argue the pros and cons. However, at a time when our acute services and public health services are being cut, the discrepancies are causing my constituents and the residents of Hertfordshire a great deal of concern.