Business of the House

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. There may be an opportunity in the context of the Budget debate to discuss that matter further. He is right to point out that from January 2011 to April this year, the one-in, one-out system will result in the net change in domestic regulation remaining at or close to zero. Eleven of the 14 Departments report a net reduction or no change in the regulatory costs to business. The red tape challenge has so far considered more than 1,200 regulations, and has agreed to scrap or improve well over half of them.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

More than six weeks ago, the Department of Health’s propaganda machine put out an announcement that private finance initiative hospitals, including my own, will get an additional allocation of £1.5 billion. No prior warning was given to the trusts or to MPs who are interested in this issue. Six weeks on, the allocation has not been made. May we have a statement from the Department of Health about when the allocation will be made to those hospitals, so that they can get on with planning for the future?

[Sir George Young]

I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman would preface his remarks with a tribute to the Government who are seeking to put right the disastrous PFI contracts that the previous Government entered into. None the less, in a conciliatory mood I say to him that I will pursue the issue of any resources that might be made available to his authority to give it the assistance it needs to cope with the ongoing debts incurred by the previous Administration.