Mr. Damien McCallion:

There is the scale of the two elective hospitals relative to the hubs. I will clarify one point. I mentioned earlier that they are not impacting each other, and that is because there are two separate teams are working on them, so the timescales are not there. As the Deputy says, we have taken cognisance in the elective design of the work that can go through the hubs, albeit the scale of the elective hospitals is much greater.

On the point about the elective hospitals programme, a significant amount of work is involved to get to the point of pre-tender design, which we are working through at the moment. We will appoint the firm that will work through the detail that is needed on that. It is a significant process and it does take time. We have been through this and challenged it even with our own estates colleagues about how much work there is and how we can shorten it as best as we can. Yet, it is a significant amount of work. It is not just a matter of the building design, but the operating model, IT, estates and equipping. There is a whole range of services, such as laboratory services, radiology services, etc. All of that takes a significant amount of work to take it to that next stage. That is the pre-tender approval stage under the public spending code.