I welcome the press and the public to the 21st meeting in 2005 of the Finance Committee. I remind people to switch off all pagers and mobile phones. We have apologies from Wendy Alexander. I should also mention that this is Judith Henderson's last committee meeting before she moves to a new job at the Scottish funding councils. On behalf of the committee, I thank Judith for her work.
Good morning, convener. I thank you for the invitation to come along this morning and to give evidence on our efficient government initiative. I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to explain our determination to succeed with efficient government and for the opportunity to put the record straight after some inaccurate and misleading assertions that have been made over the past week.
I will make a few comments at the outset. The committee, too, is determined to succeed in its role of maintaining proper and effective scrutiny. I do not think that the committee has had any doubt that the savings—which we hope will all be delivered—are being monitored. We have focused our attention on baselines for measuring outputs and the measurement of increases in services and I assume that we will continue to do so, in co-operation with you, minister. I certainly think that the committee has tried to play a constructive role in making clear its point to the Executive and to Audit Scotland. We are engaged in a collective enterprise to ensure that we get the best value for the people of Scotland. That is an objective both of the Executive and of the scrutiny process.
Minister, you made a number of comments on the Audit Scotland letter of 10 August 2005. However, there is a sentence in paragraph 4 of that letter that you did not highlight, which reads:
Audit Scotland is a professional and independent organisation that performs an important role in the public sector in Scotland. I would be very surprised if it said that we had reached the end of our knowledge on efficient government and that there were no more boundaries to explore. In any initiative, there will always be a requirement for processes to be refined and developed. That is what Audit Scotland said in the quotation that you read out; it said that processes require to be developed continuously. I could not agree more. We are at the beginning of an extremely important process. Our determination is to embed the proposed savings for the long term in the interests of the people whom we serve. I would take it as read that we are not the fount of all knowledge and that we will continue to develop our understanding and to pursue rigorously the efficiency and other savings as time goes by.
You accept that there is a job of work to be done to put in place the mechanisms to guarantee that the delivery of the Government's savings targets can be monitored.
That is a different interpretation. You have moved away substantially from what Audit Scotland said. Audit Scotland said that there continues to be a need for work to be done on the development of processes. We entirely accept that. We are not the fount of all knowledge and we do not think that we have all the answers or that we know about all the possible ways of identifying and monitoring the savings. Of course that is an on-going process.
The simple point that I was making was that, contrary to what you said in your opening remarks, a job of work is still to be done to guarantee that the Government's claims can actually be delivered.
It suggests to me, Mr Swinney, that you are determined selectively to quote as much as you did on television last week. What you fail to recognise—
Come on—
I let you finish, so I shall try to answer the questions that you are posing. With respect, what you fail to recognise is what the letter goes on to say. I shall read again the quotation that I read earlier. The letter states:
I am not quoting from Audit Scotland's letter any more selectively than you have, minister. I take from the letter that Audit Scotland would not be satisfied to sign off today the Government's process with the type of Audit Scotland trademark analysis that would give people comfort in the exercise that has been undertaken. How then are we supposed to judge whether the initiative reflects a genuine drive for efficiency in the Government, or simply the reallocation of resources that have not previously been allocated with the type of firmness that the Government would suggest that they have been?
I accept and welcome the constructive comments that we receive from Audit Scotland. I actively encourage our officials to continue the on-going dialogue with that organisation. I think that you have put a very ambitious interpretation on the letter that Audit Scotland has sent to the committee.
Audit Scotland's letter raises issues that I think give rise to significant questions about the Government's efficiency programme and the robustness of the claims that the Government can make about that programme. I am asking you to clarify for the committee how you intend to answer the legitimate questions that are raised by Audit Scotland.
As I have said, we shall continue the constructive on-going dialogue with that organisation. It is not for me to tell the committee how to do its work, Mr Swinney, but if you are unhappy with Audit Scotland's letter, perhaps you should ask the organisation about the matter.
I am not unhappy with Audit Scotland's letter. I think that Audit Scotland's letter is absolutely fair comment. What I am unhappy with is the reaction of the Government.
No, no.
Big questions are raised by Audit Scotland that have to be answered by the Government. It is not me who is writing down these things. These significant words are in the name of Caroline Gardner, the deputy auditor general, an independent public representative who raises big questions about the robustness of the Government's programme. I simply want to know how you intend to answer the challenges that the deputy auditor general sets out in her letter.
I think that I have already answered that question, but if you are so convinced that your interpretation of the letter is right, perhaps you should ask Audit Scotland.
It seems to me that there is an iterative process going on here. As you pointed out in your initial remarks, minister, there is not a cut-off point for Audit Scotland to scrutinise the process, which will take place over time, as will the Finance Committee's scrutiny process. Audit Scotland has indicated in the letter that some of its concerns—particularly in relation to the transparency of calculations, risk disclosure and monitoring—have been addressed in the time-releasing ETNs. However, concerns remain about whether the specification of savings is adequate, about the lack of output data to show efficiency improvements and about the need for more information to remove any uncertainty about how savings will be realised. Do you accept that the Executive continues to undertake a process of refinement to identify more information and greater clarity about how savings can be achieved and about where money is being reallocated to?
I accept entirely that dialogue and an iterative process should continue. That must be tempered by realism. We will not adopt a pure process for which, to achieve that purity, a huge checking bureaucracy must be established that costs unjustifiable amounts of public resources. With the acceptance of that reality, I am happy and delighted that our dialogue with Audit Scotland will continue. I will be happy and delighted to continue to receive advice from it. Just as I delayed the efficiency technical notes in September to ensure that we had done as much as we could to take account of what that organisation said, I will do the same in future when necessary.
I will ask the question slightly differently. You have huge experience of local government and its best-value regime, whereby a parallel exercise takes place—savings are identified and cash is reallocated. In your judgment, is the Executive behind local government in its experience of such a process? If so, do you seek to rectify that? If not, have you reached the same point as local government in the process of achieving what is called best value in local government and efficiency savings in central Government?
An important dialogue takes place with local government. It shows local government's maturity and willingness to engage actively in the process. Local government commissioned a report into its budget planning and monitoring documentation. The interim report was supplied to us. It concluded that current budgetary information would not suffice for monitoring efficient government, as that information had been prepared prior to clarification of the criteria through the technical notes. The conclusion was that few councils had an explicit and developed efficient government programme for 2005-06. That was a mature recognition.
You have yet fully to address Audit Scotland's concerns about cost offsets and untested assumptions. I note your desire to avoid bean counters and balance that with your desire to meet the objective scrutiny test. Those three problems that beset efficient government also beset most organisations, other countries and businesses. Other countries and businesses get round them by having an outcome focus. If we were trying to justify efficiencies in a business to John Harvey-Jones or Richard Branson et al, they would ask what the impacts on sales, growth, profit, the cash position and market share would be. Can you cut through all the complexity, which neither we nor you like, and tell us what the outcomes will be to improve Scotland in toto and the lives of the people of Scotland?
I could not agree with you more—that is exactly our objective. Taking local government in Scotland as a good example, I want to focus far more on the outcomes from resources and far less on detailed processes that try to measure how that money is used. That is exactly the direction that I want to travel in. In our continuing dialogue with Audit Scotland, we are examining how to reach that point—indeed, Mr Russell might explain the nature of that dialogue further. I am very keen to pursue that matter.
We seem to be talking a little at cross-purposes, because what you have said very much has an output rather than an outcome ring. I am interested in the top-level outcomes such as growth, sales, profit, cash position and market share that would be important to business. What are your equivalent macro-objectives and outcomes for efficient government in Scotland?
I have tried to demonstrate that the outputs from an efficient government saving could be used to expand a range of care services. Of course, it is extremely difficult to quantify their contribution to the person who receives those services and to the overall well-being of the community. That said, no one here would disagree that, for example, in East Kilbride, where the demographics are challenging, expanding care services to support the aging population would have a public good. I must repeat that I am not going to get into some abstract process to seek the exact definition of what improving the range of care services means for a community. Such a process would be futile and not worth while.
But other countries are not taking that approach. Instead, they are setting targets for improving economic growth and Government revenues, for boosting population and life expectancy and for getting more people of working age out of economic inactivity and into the marketplace. Are you willing to step up to such outcomes and measure your efficient government initiatives against them?
Of course we want to step up to such outcomes. In fact, the Executive pursues them across the whole range of its activities. For example, later this year, it will become illegal to smoke in an enclosed public space. That is because we want to improve life expectancy in Scotland and know to a degree of scientific fact that the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005 will have that result. I think that Mr Russell wants to comment at this point.
We need to strike a balance when we look at outcomes, outputs and inputs. I might be able to provide a useful illustration from my experience in the Scottish Prison Service. If the outcome from imprisonment is reduced reoffending, it is hard to know which governor in which year contributed most to the reduction in reoffending for prisoners on life sentences. Was it the result of the work carried out in taking those prisoners off drugs in the first two years of their sentence, the work on their literacy in years 3 to 5, or the pre-release work in years 12 to 14? We all agree that the outcome of reduced reoffending is desirable, but we need space in our range of tools for outputs, which give us a more practical and immediate handle on what is happening. We are not saying that one aspect should be pursued to the exclusion of all others; instead, we must strike a balance. I also point out that the definition of efficiency is the relationship between outputs and inputs.
I take that—
Jim, a couple of other members want to ask questions.
You said that all savings will be regularly monitored, but how do you intend to monitor savings that are made through, for example, arm's-length organisations, local authorities and health boards? You have said that local authorities' budgetary monitoring will be altered. I notice that efficiency savings are to be made in the use of classroom assistants. Will councils' budgetary monitoring be altered to allow them to pick up those savings and ensure that the money is transferred to front-line services?
Efficiency technical notes back up the entire programme. They are not insubstantial, although from listening to some commentators one might think that the entire document was written on one side of a piece of A4 paper. It is through the notes and the supporting processes to which I referred earlier that we are able to do the things to which you alluded. We do not draw up the notes in isolation; the notes relating to health are drawn up in conjunction with the Health Department to ensure that it agrees with the methodology that the notes contain and that it is aware of the supporting processes that will monitor its success in achieving what is pursued in the notes. That is how we do it—through that extensive process. Please do not take away the impression that the notes are drawn up simply by the Executive sitting here in Edinburgh and writing down its view of how things should be done. The notes are drawn up in conjunction with the kind of arm's-length bodies to which you referred.
I accept the first point that you make—that the savings have come through the Executive's working in conjunction with local authorities, health boards and others. However, I am still unsure how the Executive will be able to pick up whether the savings have been realised and whether the money has been released from the services and pushed to the front line. Does the Executive have a monitoring role at that level?
Mr Russell will deal with that point.
Yes, we do. Our Health Department colleagues have substantial tools for tracking how each health board is getting on with each initiative. In the case of time-releasing savings, it is not a question of transferring saved funds from one budget to another; by definition, the saving is in time and often means release of front-line staff for more fruitful work. If people are off for fewer days in the year with sick absence, they are available to treat patients or teach pupils for more days in the year. That is where we get the benefit most directly.
Those monitoring devices are useful, whereas the ones that you mentioned earlier were time wasting or were not time efficient. There seems to be a contradiction.
I do not quite understand that point.
You are right to say that there should not be a huge bureaucracy of bean counters, button counters or whatever. However, the efficiency savings require effective baselines and clear outturn measures to be demonstrated, both from your point of view and from ours. Do you feel that the information that you have given us provides the correct balance, or do you accept Audit Scotland's view that further work is required on the outturn measures so that it can be demonstrated that the efficiency savings can and will be delivered?
Yes, of course I do. That is why, in November—the methodology is not in place in local government—local government will develop a methodology that will allow it to demonstrate exactly the kind of thing to which you have just alluded. Of course, that work is not complete and we acknowledge that.
Although I did not smoke before I came to the committee today, I will probably need a fag by the time the smoking ban comes in.
I strongly discourage you from doing that, Mr McAveety; however, it is your personal choice.
No—I want to keep my youthful good looks.
Part of the on-going dialogue that we are having with Audit Scotland is about working out a means by which we can assert what we believe has been achieved in a year in terms that will allow Audit Scotland to review that assertion. There would not be an audit certificate of the true-and-fair-view variety; we are working on what shape of statement would be appropriate. There would be evidence to back up any claim of what had been achieved. We are still working with Audit Scotland on the precise shape, but it will need to be in place by the end of the year.
It is all about the pursuit of proportionality—we want to get things in proportion. We do not want unnecessary bureaucracy, but we want to try to demonstrate as far as we can where savings have been generated and what they have effected in terms of service to individuals in the community.
Even if we get that, which is the main objective of the process, the other demonstrable objective has to be to allocate money to what we think are the priorities on which the general public are focused. We have to consider how to make decisions so that we do not throw money at areas that have not demonstrated good outcomes, but instead at areas that can demonstrate good outcomes and where there can be genuine benefit. What process do you have at the Executive end for assessing that?
That introduces the wide question of relationship with our delivery agents, the most obvious of which is local government. It is a shame that we continue to use local government as a reference point, but it consumes considerable public resources and it is important to communities. What Mr McAveety is asking about takes us beyond efficient government. We are determined to establish a dialogue and process that will allow us to do the following: to become much more outcome focused in the use of resources; to spend less time on monitoring how money is spent; to spend less time on demanding myriad plans from our delivery agents about how they will go about achieving objectives; to spend more time achieving the headline outcomes; and, through the detail of an outcome agreement, to trust organisations to decide on their own how they will achieve the outcomes. That is how we want to avoid unnecessary process, which I think is important.
I do not entirely agree with your final point. I think that Government has a responsibility to try to focus resources on certain areas, but I would like that to be done using the kind of language that people in local government feel comfortable with. I do not think that there is a difference between what most local government politicians want to happen in their areas and what most parliamentarians want to happen in those areas; the question is about finding commonality. That is really not a question; it is more of an observation.
I do not disagree, but there is a fine line between the Executive's saying that the Executive—which has been elected to serve the people of Scotland—will set headline priorities for improvement of the country that we will transmit to our delivery agents, and our saying that the Executive will get into the fine detail of telling those delivery agents exactly how that improvement should be achieved. That is the remit of councils, as elected organisations.
I agree with that. Organisations that have a democratic mandate have equivalence. However, are you comfortable that executive agencies and the civil service apply the same rigour in their approach as elements of local government and health boards have shown in recent years?
I am on record as saying that I do not think that the model that we currently employ for executive agencies and other bodies is necessarily the right one. In the circumstances in which we find ourselves in 2005, there is a case for refining that model. I have no hesitation in repeating that.
You say that it is not part of your role to dictate to other organisations how they should spend efficiencies that they have gained. However, in effect, is not that what you do to local authorities when you assume that they will make efficiency savings and then withhold a proportion of the expenditure that you would otherwise have given them, particularly when you do not do that to other bodies?
No—that is a misinterpretation. I am not dictating to local authorities how they should deliver services; rather, I am saying that they should generate efficiencies, which is a different thing altogether.
Yes, but you are in effect saying to local authorities, "We expect you to make £X efficiency savings, so we will withhold £X from your budget and you will plan your services within that new sum." As far as I understand it, you are not saying that to anyone else. For example, you say to the Health Department, "We expect you to make £Y savings, but you can keep that money and spend it on health." That does not seem to represent parity of treatment.
That is only a small part of the story; it must be viewed against the background of the record increases in resources that have been made available to local government and councils, which have proved in past years that they are more than capable of generating savings. It is with reference to local government's proud record of generating savings that we effected the spending review as we did.
The same comment about record levels of investment is also true of the health service—I readily concede that it is receiving record sums of investment—yet the Health Department is being told that it can keep any efficiency savings and spend them on other aspects of health care while local government is being told that the Executive will assume that it will make efficiency savings but will spend the money on something else. The problem is that local authorities get a multiplicity of demands for expenditure on particular programmes but cannot afford to fund them.
Yes—they will always get those demands. However, because there has been a 40 per cent increase in the resources that are available to local government, local authorities are far more able to meet those demands today than ever they were in the past. By 2008, there will have been a 50 per cent increase in the resources available to local government since 1999.
Do you accept the simple point that local authorities are not being treated in the same fashion as other agencies of government?
No. It is for the Executive to determine its priorities and how it will go about distributing money at any particular time.
I think that we might be making some sort of progress in relation to the concern about what efficiency means. The problem is that, generally, efficiency is defined in terms of a ratio between input and output, so if it is difficult to measure output, it is difficult to do a numeric calculation that shows how efficient we are.
As I said earlier, local government will develop the methodology for establishing baselines that show where the saving was generated and where the saving was applied. For example, it will not be enough for a local authority just to say that it applied £1 million of savings to delivery of care services in its community; it will have to say that it delivered 1,000 hours of a particular kind of care last year and that this year it will deliver 1,100 hours of that particular kind of care. It will have to show that the volume of the services into which it has redirected the savings has increased.
Some of the reallocation in the spending review 2004 process will come after 2004. How will we see the changes in allocation from 2004? How will those be reported?
I know that some people—strangely, given their position last week—tried to portray a position whereby somehow the clock stopped in 2004, when savings were identified. The fact that savings have been identified before the start of this efficient government process does not mean that those savings will not be affected during the timespan of the process. During the spending review 2004, it was identified that certain levels of savings would be required; however, it was always made clear that those savings would be achieved during the three-year period between April 2005 and the end of March 2008. This is a three-year programme.
You have identified further savings since then, which will be invested in your priorities. How will that be reported to us or to the general public? How will we know when there is extra money for a certain priority?
That will happen through the mechanisms in local government to which I have referred, through the efficiency technical notes and through our continuing dialogue with Audit Scotland. An amalgam of those processes will demonstrate that to people.
I want to ask specifically about one of the education time-releasing savings, which is to be made through increased use of classroom assistants. I understand that savings of £9 million, £14 million and £21 million are to be made. However, you will have to spend to save, as you are going to invest £7 million, £11 million and £16 million in employing classroom assistants to free up teachers' time. Will the actual savings be £2 million, £3 million and £5 million, as you will have had to invest more money to make those time-releasing savings?
There are two kinds of savings involved.
I am not always sure of the distinction between the two. Earlier, you used the example of a reduction in sickness absence meaning that medical personnel would be more available to treat patients. Equally, that is a cash saving, if it means that a health board need not spend money on supply or agency nurses. I am a little confused about the difference between time-releasing and cash-releasing savings.
Mr Russell might want to say a word on that. First, I will say that the issue has two aspects. Of course a saving is generated, but the addition and application of classroom assistants also has benefit, which is harder to measure. I could not claim that our investment in classroom assistants has contributed directly to the fact that more than 50 per cent of our young people go on to further or higher education. In 12 or 15 years' time, 60 per cent of our young people might well go on to further or higher education, and it will be difficult to claim hand on heart and to show that the addition of classroom assistants contributed to increasing that percentage.
That is a nice subject because everybody would suppose that teachers do not keep time sheets that record what they do every 15 minutes and how much time they spend on activities that are ancillary to, or which support, their main teaching role. That is an example of a matter on which we might do a sample survey to find out how much of teachers' time has been freed up, from which we would make an estimate. I am not saying that education services will do that, but that is a nice illustration of Audit Scotland's point that recording systems are not in place. Nobody would expect teachers to measure their time in the way that a fee-charging accountant in private practice might record time. The aim is to have assessment of the gain that is being achieved that is as robust as is reasonable.
You say that measurement is difficult, so how did you arrive at the figures of £9 million, £14 million and £21 million that are quoted in the efficiency technical notes?
We can estimate in advance, but if we want to claim afterwards that such-and-such is the correct measure of the time that has been saved, we will be challenged to give a reasonable basis for the estimate. We do not want to introduce cumbersome time-recording systems that are over the top in scale. We must ask what reasonable evidence we can adduce in support of the claim. That will be part of the challenge for us.
An important issue arises. I understand that we keep returning to the fact that we do not want to establish cumbersome measures of achievement, but we need to have baselines, transaction costs and productivity outcomes in place so that we can get a grip of the situation. That is one of several matters that you say that you have not bottomed out yet. Is that a fair comment?
We might not bottom out the issue in that way: we might use sample surveys rather than have every teacher fill in a time sheet. In fact, I guarantee that in no circumstances will we expect every teacher to fill in a time sheet, so some people will always take pot shots at the exercise.
We have a shared interest in having robust baselines that will allow us to make appropriate measurements. I will ask one more follow-up question to try to pin you down more. When do you expect to tell us how the targeted efficiency savings of £912.3 million by 2008 will be reallocated? Do you have a projected date from which to give us that information?
We will report our progress annually. That is as much as we can be expected to do. Obviously, it is difficult for us to roll on into the third year at this point—any reasonable person would acknowledge that. We also expect our colleagues in Audit Scotland to supply an objective commentary on our assertions on progress.
An issue of timescale is involved. Savings need to be identified in order that they can be reallocated through the budget process.
Yes.
Clearly there is an issue with the current savings exercise. Here we are, part way through a year, but we are still identifying the savings that are to be realised. The issue for your department—perhaps it is an administrative one—is to ensure that the savings are identified in time for the funds to be reallocated and used effectively.
I fully accept that but—by the same token—we have to start somewhere.
You have covered most of the ground that I am interested in. However, I want to double check that I understood correctly what you said about balancing the costs and benefits in identifying whether progress has been made. I think that we all accept your argument on the need for proportionality. However, where there are financial figures in the document, I assume that that is an indication that you accept in some way that the figures are measurable. Surely the argument is therefore how to and not whether to measure progress. Is that correct?
I expect the figures to be measurable. I agree with your initial comments. I hope that everyone who is associated with the committee takes the same approach.
I have a question on the technical notes, one of which is significant in terms of measuring progress. I refer to the consultant productivity part of the time-releasing element, which accounts for a third—perhaps slightly more—of all the time-releasing savings that are identified for that element.
I have to agree that that is not without its difficulties, but we are determined to try our best to get there. If, at some time, we were to encounter insurmountable difficulties, we would come back and report that to the committee. I would be happy to do that. Without introducing undue and burdensome processes, our aim is worth while.
Looking through the ETNs, I note that a significant number of projects involve new information and communication technology systems, e-procurement systems and the like. The tradition with ICT systems is that they do not work out as planned. I accept that. I also accept that any problems in the delivery of those systems should be picked up by existing measures. Audit Scotland has identified other issues about new systems and processes, in particular the impact of training and retraining costs. How does the Executive plan to ensure that those costs are netted into the potential benefits that new ICT systems bring?
Mr Russell wants to make a point about that, which I will preface by saying that going anywhere near accepting that delivering meaningful ICT projects in the public sector is simply difficult is a counsel of despair. We hear about projects that go wrong, but many projects go spectacularly right.
My point is that it would be self-defeating if a change in business processes were to result in more of the time of front-line staff being consumed by administrative and support activities. That would be a false prospectus for us to make claims on. The whole objective is to release the time of front-line staff to deal with more clients or customers.
When I visited East Ayrshire a few weeks ago, I saw the system that has been implemented there through which people can now pay accounts and book services online—they do not need to engage with a member of the council staff. Obviously, significant administrative savings are generated as a result of that process.
I agree that the problems that the public sector has had with the introduction of new ICT systems have been no worse than those that the private sector has had. The private sector has been plagued with problems, too, although it has had its successes in introducing new ICT systems.
It is a question of saying what proportion of the service's resources goes on support activity rather than on front-line service delivery. I was impressed by the fact that the City of Edinburgh Council's new house-letting system has attracted around 60 per cent of its clients online—that is an astonishing figure and backs up the point that the minister has made. Such systems will mean a big change in the utility of the previous measures. If all the measures relate to the service time that is consumed by a counter clerk or somebody in a call office in handling business but 60 per cent of business comes through online, there will be a complete transformation in what needs to be counted and measured.
The process has forced me to do a lot of homework. I have looked closely at the work of W Edwards Deming, the guy who turned around Japan in the 1950s and the father of quality and efficiency. He talked about efficiency being a perpetual quest that should unite all departments, functions and people to achieve consistent and worthy outcomes. The result of that approach is that some departments have to do things that will create savings elsewhere and stop doing things that cost money elsewhere. Critically, he also said that the system must be under statistical control and that it is important to know exactly what the current outcomes are, as a baseplate.
Frankly, I think that we have answered that question. The purpose of the dialogue that we have had over the past hour or so has been to answer exactly those points. Perhaps you tuned out, Mr Mather.
We have regular monitoring of efficiency savings and are within a day or two of being halfway through the first year of the initiative. We have expected cash efficiency savings of £330 million. Will we meet that target?
I am certainly not going to do a month-by-month analysis. We will get to a point at which we are confident about reporting to the committee, as the committee would expect. That reflects my strong desire not to be constantly hanging over people asking for their on-going tally. We will put in place mechanisms that will allow us to report to the committee and to the general public. However, it would be inappropriate at the moment to start making guesses about where we are, five months into the process.
In the latest efficiency technical note, the health efficiency saving has been increased from £90 million to £208 million. Is that to do with assumed efficiency savings, as with the £90 million? Will all that cash remain in the health portfolio?
Every penny will remain in the health portfolio. The Health Department is to be complimented on the fact that it has been able substantially to increase its contribution to efficient government.
Is the Health Department saying that it can make efficiency savings of £208 million that can be redistributed to other aspects of health care?
Unequivocally.
I thank the minister for attending. Clearly, the committee will maintain a continuing interest in the issue and I am sure that we will be watchful as to what further information we get from the Executive.