Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I have strengthened it further and I have just issued a new draft design for the HSE centre to replace the current structure at the top of the HSE from the way it is. Specifically included in that is a new dedicated position reporting directly to me for a national directorate of major capital and infrastructure, to bring together all of the resources we need to do exactly what the Deputy is talking about in a faster time.

Our estates people are exceptionally good and hard-working professional people. One, we do not have enough of them and two, we have piled too much work onto them in recent years. We need to upskill them with regard to modern methods of building and so on. We are very heavily focused on that and I have to say, to be fair to my colleagues in the Department of Health, that they have been absolutely shoulder to shoulder with us on that. I spoke with the head of estates in the west only last weekend about some of the pressures and how we might be able to help there.