Layla Moran

I will make progress, if I may, because the clock is ticking down. As for that £1.7 billion, once we add in national insurance contribution increases and inflationary costs, the NHS has had to ask for an additional £812 million on top, so it is already running a little behind. Next year, the increase is due to be £10.6 billion, but as the Committee heard in a hearing, the expected pressures are £11.7 billion. We can all do the maths. There is a problem. The way it will get solved, at least on paper, is through an enormous 4% productivity increase, combined with cost reduction. We need more detail about how exactly that will be done. I echo the point made by my fellow Committee member, the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), about capital expenditure. In these estimates, we see that there has already been a decrease in capital spend of £1 billion from the 2024-25 main estimate. It is explained away as a transfer to day-to-day spending, due to a reclassification of spending on technology and new hospitals as day-to-day spending. I do not know how others feel, but that does not sound quite right to me. I am concerned that the Government are falling into the same trap as previous Governments—perhaps understandably, because they have to pay for the day-to-day somehow. The Government gave an assurance to the Public Accounts Committee that they would stop making those sorts of changes. Is that still the case? Finally, I want to do more of this; I want to undertake more scrutiny of the estimates, but it is quite hard to do, because there is a lack of detail. For example, in the document, £120 billion comes under the sub-heading, “NHS providers”, and there is absolutely no detail under that. Will the Minister commit to working with the Committee and the House of Commons scrutiny unit to provide Parliament with a meaningful breakdown, so we can have more wonderful debates just like these?