THE Treasury “will have to have some hard words” with Health to close a projected £18m shortfall in this year’s budget, Treasury Minister Elaine Millar has said.
She warned that while the public wanted a good- quality, safe health service, they “don’t expect to be paying through the nose for it”.
Last year, Deputy Millar’s predecessor, Deputy Ian Gorst, issued a stark warning that Health “must live within their budget”, a message reinforced by the new minister as the department this week announced a projected £18m deficit this year “before mitigation measures”.
Deputy Millar said she recognised that Health had challenges, particularly with regard to recruitment, and she acknowledged the efforts of the recovery team working to achieve a turnaround.
But, asked about the continuing deficit projections, she said her department “will have to have some hard words about what is going on”.
She said: “Health is important – it is very important to the community – but we need to avoid a situation where Health is just sucking up more and more of the resource to the prejudice of other services.
“The public don’t like to see a waste of money – they don’t like excessive spending and I’m sure even though they want a good-quality safe health service, they don’t expect to be paying through the nose for it.
“We will always have bigger costs because of the scale, but it’s what is a cost because of that small scale, and what is an inefficiency.
“That is a very important piece of work that I believe the Health team are very engaged in.
“I think we really need to be working on closing that gap and I certainly don’t want to see it getting any bigger,” the minister said.
