Autumn Statement

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The plans that I have set out involve spending reductions and welfare reductions. By the way, the Labour party is the first to attack me for them. People have seen the decisions and the approach that we have taken on spending. We will go on reducing spending and reducing welfare, and we do not need tax increases.

As I remarked in my exchange with the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), the previous Labour Chancellor planned to increase VAT after the general election—he put that in his memoirs—and those of us who were in that Parliament will remember that the Labour Treasury produced, by mistake, a document that said VAT would go up, which caused the Government great embarrassment at the time. As I say, our plans involve spending reductions and welfare reductions, and that is what we are committed to do.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I warmly thank the Chancellor for investing the extra billions of pounds in our NHS. There is not only extra revenue, but a transformation fund that will transform the NHS into the service that we need for the future. Does he share my concern, however, that our endorsement of the NHS’s forward view—our long-term plan for the NHS—would be put at risk if we handed it over to a Government who had no long-term economic plan to fund it?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right. The transformation fund is an important part of the NHS’s forward view, which has been looked at and endorsed by the Health Committee, which she chairs, the various health charities and the royal colleges. The head of the NHS, Simon Stevens, who drew up that plan, welcomed what we announced at the weekend and travelled with me to Homerton university hospital to explain how the transformation can take place. My hon. Friend is right that it is impossible to have a strong NHS unless we have a strong economy: we are delivering both.