Downing Street Says

» Wednesday, March 8, 2006

NHS

Asked who the Prime Minister thought was responsible for NHS finances the chief executive or ministers, the PMOS said that he had set out the position in regard to Sir Nigel Crisp yesterday and he did not retract a single word of that. In terms of the deficits, they quite simply were the result of greater transparency that had been introduced into the system. We could now see where the money was being spent and where there were surpluses and deficits.

The key to this, which people were not instantly drawn to, was that the vast majority of trusts were not in deficit. As the Prime Minister had said at PMQs today the percentage of the deficit was a very small percentage of the overall NHS budget. That did not mean that we said it was not a problem, we clearly had to address the issue. But neither did it mean that we did what we had in the past, when it had been possible for bodies in the NHS to go into deficit because they knew they would be bailed out by other parts of the NHS. This was partly, historically, why this had arisen. The transparency meant that this was no longer possible – a good thing, but we had to address the deficit issue and we were.

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NHS

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