Speeches by Coleman.

“Why not measure underspend quarterly? Why wait until the end of the year?”

“Did you have—”

“Is that a discussion you are prepared to have with the Treasury?”

“In the brave new world that we are meant to be in, and in trying to be a different sort of Government doing things in different ways, why not leave the money with them and insist that they spend it on dentistry in the following year?”

“Why don’t you leave it with them and let them spend it in the following year? Why are you pulling it back?”

“You are pulling it back?”

“I remember from sitting on an ICB that there was quite a hefty discussion about what it was doing with the underspend, and the implication was that it was being spent on other things.”

“There are 42, sorry.”

“If we look at all the 100-and-whatever ICBs in the country, would we find that it had not happened in any of them?”

“They were mistaken?”

“We heard in the previous session that money was being taken from the underspend and spent on other things.”

“In the ICB? At the moment, you have a situation where ICBs are required to ringfence the funding, but they do not actually observe the ringfence, so it does not seem to be enforced. When you say it is ringfenced, it is not in practice.”

“That is very helpful. We have talked a lot about underspends, so forgive me for asking a final question on that. Is there not an argument for just rolling over the underspends into the following year? I am coming back to the question of ringfencing, because I think it was not sufficiently answered in the previous sessi…”

“Is it worth considering?”

“Will you be consulting on having more salaried dentists?”

“Do you know what percentage it will be?”

“Thank you. Anna.”

“Yes. Is the data there to be pulled together?”

“How will that improve assessment and diagnosis?”

“You are saying, get the research to make the case that makes the Government want to change the system. In itself, that sort of research is not going to improve or change anything.”