We keep on being told from the right wing that “money does not grow on trees”, but the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War has so far cost millions (the actual war was costly in many senses too.)

These are #pmqs from my 40th birthday.

Nick Brown MP asks the Prime Minister about the underlying causes of the £2bn forecast deficit for NHS Trusts, and what the remedies might be.

This topic hit the headlines big time yesterday, but it had been copiously discussed by John Appleby by the King’s Fund in one of their documents previously.

The exchange as reported in Hansard went as follows:-

Specifically, the Prime Minister contends that, “money has been ploughed back into better patient care in our NHS.”

This is likely to be true as a half-truth as he does not say “the” before the word “money”.

But where did the money actually go?

It appears it has traditionally gone to HM Treasury, NOT directly to the Department of Health budget.

Everyone knows that the pay settlement for the NHS was tight this year, given the pay freeze discussed at the #RCNCongress this year.

Crispin Dowler reported in the HSJ in October 2012:

“The Department of Health has returned nearly £3bn of its funding to the Treasury over the past two years, despite facing its tightest financial settlement for five decades.

“A Treasury spokesman this week confirmed to HSJ the department had handed back around £1bn of the funding it was allocated for health spending in 2011-12. Just £316m of the £1.4bn that the DH left unspent last financial year has been carried over for it to use in 2012-13.

“The final sum clawed back from last year’s health allocation is double the £500m estimate that was published in chancellor George Osborne’s March Budget.”

Sofia Lind in the Pulse magazine reports a similar story in 2013.

My brief Twitter chat yesterday with @DaveWWest went as follows.

about #NHS ‘efficiency savings’ 12.17 pm PM ‘..that money has been ploughed back into better patient care in the NHS’ true? @DaveWWest

— shibley (@legalaware) June 18, 2014

@legalaware largely paid for increased activity, so yes in a sense but you could point to the annual DH underspends til 13/14, which are not — Dave West (@Davewwest) June 18, 2014

@Davewwest Thanks Dave. I’ve never worked out where in fact the surplus goes – I had thought it goes back into HM Treasury not DoH.

— shibley (@legalaware) June 18, 2014

@legalaware yes you’re right — Dave West (@Davewwest) June 18, 2014

Andy Burnham MP has claimed that the Prime Minister no longer wishes to talk about the NHs in the run up to the general election on May 7th/8th 2014.

There did seem, however, to be a record number of questions on the NHS in #pmqs?