Professor Michael McMahon:

Absolutely. As I was alluding to, the challenge with investment spending, as I said in my opening statement, is that it is incredibly hard to carry out investment spending quickly and achieve good value for money. It is not simply an issue of throwing a bit of money at it today and then having dealt with it. Building a new hospital, for example, is a capital spend, but in order for it to be effective, it brings with it a series of core current spending that will come in the future. A hospital without machines, doctors, nurses, janitors, porters and so on is not useful. An overall plan, therefore, needs to take those things into account, and if there is an opportunity to do them in one part of the country that is high value, with the money to be raised howsoever, that can all be done within the net national spending rule.