Leaving the EU: NHS Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-15
Topic: Mixed Topics
David Mowat (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman mentions social care, and that is fair. It is funded separately to the NHS, and the budgets are separate. During the course of this Parliament the social care budget will increase in real terms. I do accept that the social care system is under pressure, but there is a massive disparity in performance in social care between councils. The top 10% of councils are about 20 to 25 times better in terms of outcomes for delayed transfers of care and so forth than the bottom 10%. There are many facets to this, therefore, but I accept the basic point. I think that, all other things being equal, Members on both sides of the House would like the NHS to have more money; let us agree on that and see how we make progress on it Brexit introduced a number of variables that may not have been there before. What will be the impact of Brexit on our economy? Our GDP in three or four years could be higher, but also could be lower, because of Brexit. The truth is that neither the hon. Gentleman nor I knows the answer to that. There are different views on that in this House, too, although some with other views may not be here today. This is important and relevant because if the economy were to have a significant difficulty, that could impact on spending commitments. The second variable is a very substantive one and was mentioned earlier: the exchange rate. Our exchange rate went down about 15%, principally, it would seem reasonable to say, as a consequence of Brexit. That is a good and a bad thing for the economy. Many countries in the world are trying to get their exchange rate down. I represent a constituency in the north of our country where we have a more manufacturing-based economy. Frankly, a lower exchange rate will help the economy there. That may not be the case in other parts of the country and in the City The exchange rate has an impact on the NHS. In fact, it has two impacts. As the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned, it will be more expensive to import products such as scanners and, potentially, to import drugs. She asked what the figure was, but I cannot give her an exact figure. My understanding is that it is considerably less than 5% of the total NHS expenditure of about £100 billion. Nevertheless, this is a relevant factor and it makes a difference The other impact of the exchange rate, which the hon. Lady did not mention, is that it will affect the attractiveness to overseas workers of the UK economy in general and the NHS in particular. If someone comes in from the EU to work in our economy and the value of the pound is 15% lower than it was a year ago, they will be earning 15% less in their home currency. That will have an impact on the margin in relation to staffing, and that is an issue that we need to manage The third variable is the one that we have spent so much time talking about—namely, the payment that we make to the EU. I am not going to get bogged down in the numbers, but I believe that we pay the EU about £20 billion a year, of which we get roughly £10 billion back. Leaving the EU would therefore create a bonus. The hon. Member for Streatham mentioned a letter. Even if that bonus were to materialise, as I expect it to, it will not happen until after we have left the EU, so his writing a letter to the Chancellor now strikes me as somewhat symbolic.