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Scotland Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She made two points, the first of which was about sparsity. Scotland is more spread out than the rest of the UK. Page 18 of the Holtham report takes that sparsity into account. The Scottish national health service has to take sparsity into account in the allocation of money. Parts of Scotland are very spread out, such as the highlands and islands, Orkney and the Hebrides. The Scottish NHS adjustment in respect of that, which was validated by the Holtham formula, was 1.5%. We are dealing with a figure of 20%. The second point that my hon. Friend made was about deprivation. There are areas of deprivation all over the country. That is why it is so important that the formula is based on need. There can be no argument about that.