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NHS Deficits

If I may, I should like to come on to the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley raised. He commented on the effect of RAB on NHS trusts; in our reply to the Committee’s report, we said that we would look into the issue in detail. We said that, in principle, we accepted the logic of what the Audit Commission’s report had to say about the effects of RAB as applied to national health service trusts. The resources needed to bring about a situation in which that issue could be addressed would have to be drawn from the NHS, but I can give him the assurance that, in principle, the Department accepts the logic of what he, the Committee, and the Audit Commission have said. We will say more in due course, as the financial year comes to a close. My right hon. Friend asked about top-slicing. He asked how much money will be paid back, and what arrangements would be put in place to make sure that it was paid back. Of course, under the logic of the RAB system, the money can be paid back as soon as financial recovery allows. The issue is how quickly all organisations in a particular region come back into balance and tackle overspending; that will allow the resource in the region to be paid back more quickly.