Speeches by Stafford.

“To continue on strikes, the cost of July’s industrial action was funded from existing NHS budgets. When Sir Jim was in front of us in September on strikes, he said, “but bearing the cost of that”—“that” being the strikes—“would be beyond our ability to cope with…It would be unreasonable for the NHS to do that, and it w…”

“Just one final point of clarification. You said you would not cut NHS budgets. Can you confirm you would not cut social care budgets as well?”

“So you will cut NHS budgets?”

“Where is it going to come from, then?”

“This is my final question. Secretary of State, you stated very recently—I think it was earlier this month—that you will not cut NHS budgets to fund the pharma deal. Can you set out how you are going to fund that?”

“But you must have some idea, Secretary of State, and you must have some idea of where that money is going to come from when you have to spend it.”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), my constituency neighbour, for securing this debate. Housing and planning are among the issues I hear about most from my constituents across Farnham, Bordon, Haslemere, Liphoo…”

“We are not going to make it in the timetable that you mentioned.”

“Forgive me; we don’t have much time. Where is the money going to come from?”

“So essentially that target has been scrapped.”

“That is not massively helpful. In which case, let us move on to funding. Is the Department on track to eliminate deficit support funding in ’26-27, given that 92 trusts are still in deficit?”

“Okay, so in spring?”

“Can you be a little bit more specific, Secretary of State?”

“Thank you, Chair. I have three, hopefully brief, questions with hopefully brief answers. First, as far as I am aware the Government are yet to publish any timescale or scope for the health Bill; when will the Bill be published?”

“Therefore, going forward, given that there will probably be more strikes—I hope there are not—are you, Secretary of State, going to give a guarantee that in future the NHS will not have to find internal savings to cover these strikes?”

“But if money has been rightly saved in the NHS, that money has been spent on strike action rather than on improving services. Essentially, it has had an impact on frontline services, because that money could have been spent on improving x, y or z.”

“I do understand that.”

“Is that correct, Sir Jim?”

“T2. The Justice Secretary’s plan to slash jury trials without any guarantee that the backlog of cases will fall has not survived first contact with Labour Back Benchers. The backlash has forced No. 10 to reassure Labour Members that legislation will not be introduced until October next year, but the Justice Secretary’s…”

“19. What discussions he has had with service chiefs on the proposed level of spending in the forthcoming defence investment plan.”