Mr. Martin Varley:

As I alluded earlier, I do not have all the facts, but it is quite possible that the agreements differ in terms of the basics of the agreements. The agreement here was to acquire access to all the capacity and pay for it, as such, whereas I think - subject to verifying this - the UK agreement may be around payment for capacity used or sought but not all of it.

Therefore, it allowed the private hospitals in the UK to also continue to provide care to private patients in terms of continuity of care as well.

The agreement was entered into in a very extremely difficult and challenging circumstance whereby most of us were of the view we were going to be overwhelmed with patients infected with the Covid virus and everybody approached that with the best possible intentions. Where we have slightly gone wrong is that there has not been flexibility in terms of how the agreement works in practice.