Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I am particularly anxious to respond to that. That is one of the reasons I prepared the lengthy interview that I gave last week.

I am clear on the fact that there has been significant funding in the health service and people are entitled to see that this money is being used in their best interests. I am equally clear that a lot has been achieved with that.

I have been more than forthright and honest in saying that there are three parts to the problem, one of which is control. There is a control issue in aspects of what we do. However, I reject the notion that the health service or the 150,000 people I am privileged to lead are some sort of "flesh eating" thing on the public finances, as one commentator described it. Ninety-nine per cent of people who come into work in the health service every day work and give their best. Our history leads to the state of our buildings, infrastructure, ICT and everything else. If all of those were corrected there would be a lot more efficiencies but in the meantime, while those are being corrected, we do everything we can to achieve efficiencies. Everybody wants to talk to me about the overspending health service but nobody wants to talk to me about the fact that when we changed our energy contract when it was up for renewal on 1 April, our full-year price on the previous year and on the plan for next year went up by 85%. That is not down to me being a waster. The lights are turned on where patients are looked after and MRI machines and so on are used.

I have accepted that there is a control environment challenge and that makes up about one third of our challenge. I am happy to take that on the chin, deal with it and correct it and I have good plans in place to deal with that. However, I absolutely reject the notion that we are a bunch of wasters with public money.