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Mr. Waldegrave: The right hon. Gentleman is creating a good deal of confusion--inadvertently, I am sure--about the falling baseline for the Department of Health in the second year. That is nothing to do with the national health service, but represents the transfer of money to local authorities in a ring-fenced grant for community care. There is a real-terms increase for the national health service in each of the years.

Mr. Brown: I should be grateful if the Chief Secretary told us how much money has been transferred and where we can find the additions in the Department of the Environment budget.

Mr. Waldegrave: That is in the local authority settlement. I think, from memory, that the figure is about £300 million, but I shall write to the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Brown: I should be grateful for that. The Chief Secretary should look at table 5A.5, "Control Total by department in real terms".

The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Phillip Oppenheim): He has just explained that.

Mr. Brown: No, he was explaining another table, which shows a 0.8 per cent. fall in real terms in the Department of Health budget in the second year, which he now says is accounted for by a £300 million transfer to the Department of the Environment, which is certainly absent from the Department of the Environment figures.

The figure for Department of Health spending in 1998-99 is £35.38 billion and the Chief Secretary is talking about £300 million. Let him explain table 5A.5, which is absolutely clear, and shows that spending on the national health service will be £32.9 billion in 1997-98; £33 billion in 1998-99, an increase of 0.1 per cent.; and £33 billion in 1999-2000. Where is the real-terms increase year on year if spending is frozen between 1998-99 and 1999-2000? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can explain that.

Mr. Waldegrave: I shall set out the figures in my speech, but I can say now that there is a real-terms increase each year for the national health service, and if one includes the private finance initiatives, there is a bigger real-terms increase.

Mr. Brown: We already know that capital expenditure in the national health service is being cut; next year's cut will be 10 per cent. Will the Chief Secretary--I am giving him another chance--explain why the figure for the NHS in 1998-99 is £33 billion, and remains the same for 1999-2000? If there is to be a real-terms increase every year, why is the figure frozen?

Mr. Waldegrave: Let me give the hon. Gentleman the exact figures, in all the different forms in which they can be cited. The total NHS plan on plan is a 2 per cent. increase in the first year, then 0.25 per cent., then 0.1 per

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cent. in the third year. The figures if PFI is included, which is reasonable, are 2.3 per cent. in the first year, then 0.6 per cent., then 0.4 per cent. The patient care figure within that represents a 2.9 per cent. increase in the first year, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said.

Mr. Brown: The House will judge from the Minister's figures how small is the Conservatives' commitment to the health service. Table 5A.5 shows that it is planned to spend £33 billion on the health service in 1998-99 and only £33 billion in 1999-2000. What does that suggest? Perhaps the Chief Secretary will devote a considerable proportion of his speech to answering questions from my hon. Friends about what is happening to the health service, because everyone knows that, as on education, one cannot trust the Conservative party.

The Government failed to solve the problems in 17 years, so who would expect them to solve them in the 18th? I know how the trick works, because it was the same with the roads programme. The Government flood people with detail on the day of the Budget, to obscure the real position, and when it comes down to it, one finds that there are cuts far beyond what they announced. Let me tell the Chief Secretary--[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order.

Mr. Giles Radice (North Durham): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could we adjourn for half an hour so that Treasury Ministers can look at their figures and give the House an authoritative account?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order.

Mr. Brown: We can see how it all works from the roads programme that was leaked the day before the Budget. The leak shows how civil servants advised on how to go about things. It said that they were going to cut the long-term transport programme. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) should listen, because his constituency has a road in the programme, but it is about to disappear--along with him.

Mr. David Shaw (Dover): Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is a contingency reserve over the next three years of £15 billion? He clearly has not read the Red Book, because that reserve can more than pay for the increase to which we are committed on health and for the roads programme, which includes the benefit to my constituency. It can more than meet all the Government's needs over the next three years.

Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman should examine the roads programme document. The Dover loop is under threat of cancellation. The hon. Gentleman is interested in his constituency for the first time in a while.

Mr. Shaw rose--

Mr. Brown: I am giving the hon. Gentleman information to which he should listen. The Dover loop is scheduled to be reconsidered in the long-term programme. Unfortunately, the Selby bypass is more likely to be reprieved because the document says of it:

"Very popular scheme locally. M Alison MP supports strongly."

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It is a pity that the hon. Member for Dover is not mentioned as defending his road.

Mr. Shaw: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

Mr. Brown: I often give way to the hon. Gentleman. He will be able to speak later, and I am sure that the House will enjoy every part of his contribution.

Let us consider the argument about what has happened over the past 17 years. The Government said that they entered power with one mission in mind. The first Budget of Sir Geoffrey Howe was intended to stop the relative decline of Britain. Now, as we have been saying for the past 12 months, we find that in the world prosperity league--[Hon. Members: "Oh, no."] They do not like it. It is okay for them to talk all the time about the enterprise centre of Europe, but not for us to mention the truth: that we have fallen behind Italy after falling behind France; fallen behind Hong Kong and Singapore; and fallen from 13th to 18th in the world prosperity league. They should face facts and do something about it.

We know what has been happening to the economy. Over the past 17 years, there has been under-investment in education, in industry and in creating the employment opportunities that are necessary for us to get people back to work, reduce social security costs and get public borrowing under control. Can anyone doubt that the cracks are starting to appear in the Chancellor's story about what the Prime Minister described to the Conservative conference as the economic miracle? Interest rates and inflation are rising and manufacturing investment is falling. The Chancellor had to report yesterday that manufacturing output is stagnating. The balance of trade deficit has started to worsen again, especially in manufacturing.

Under the Conservatives, everyone fears that we face the return of the old stop-go economic cycle, where a consumer expansion is allowed for a time, but because it is not underpinned by the necessary industrial investment, it eventually leads to inflationary pressures that threaten to derail a recovery. However, because we are near to a general election, we get the usual Conservative story. The Conservatives say that the problems are solved, prospects are brighter than for a generation and Britain is the envy of the world. The economic miracle is declared in 1996, as it was, wrongly, in 1988. Every time with the Conservatives, we find that, after a general election, the picture looks quite different.

The Chancellor failed the country most in that his Budget did not equip Britain for the future. He failed because there was no new measure to get new investment in the high-technology industries in which small and medium-sized businesses are trying to expand. He failed to take up our proposals for education--in the classroom, in a university for industry and in new chances for people after school. He failed, and continues to pay the price of high borrowing, because he did not take the measures necessary to get the young and the long-term unemployed back to work.

There is a figure that should haunt the Government as they face the general election. Whatever they say about the official statistics for unemployment, the truth is there

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for every community to see: in 20 per cent. of working-age households, no one earns a wage. That is far worse than in France or Germany, almost twice as bad as in the United States of America, and on a par with Spain. The Government fail to act on that because they do not begin to admit that it is a problem. If they do not take action, we shall continue to slide down the world prosperity league.

We have already fallen below the average for national income per head in Europe. We have fallen further away from the top countries in Europe on that. The big challenge that faces the next Government will be to equip the country in education, in investment and in creating new employment opportunities for our future. In doing so, we shall tell the country the truth about what is happening to borrowing, spending and the state of the economy.

Let us sum up the election pledges that were made by the Conservatives in 1992 and see how they will have to account for themselves after their last Queen's Speech and Budget. The pledge to balance the Budget was broken. They said that their commitment to the environment was beyond doubt, but they cut the environment budget: promise broken. The pledge to maintain mortgage tax relief for home owners: broken. They said that we would be the best housed nation in Europe, but homelessness has doubled: promise broken. They promised to introduce legislation to deal with cartels and monopolies, but none was introduced: promise broken.

In 1992, the Conservatives promised to increase the number of nurses; they promised that 80 per cent. of young people would have qualifications by the end of the Parliament; they promised the biggest investment in transport infrastructure in Britain's history. All those manifesto promises were broken. People will remember most of all the promises on VAT, national insurance, mortgage tax relief and home insurance. All the promises on taxation have been cynically broken. Their promises broken, their record exposed, and their repeated failures made obvious so that they cannot be trusted again, they should face the truth. They should face the electorate. They will have to face the consequences: a change of Government.

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