The noble Lord’s argument is no good if we stick with the provisions in the Bill, because, as he said himself, the National Office report says that the target resulted in some activities having to be rushed in. They had to be ready to be implemented and other activities had to be delayed. That is not
providing certainty or long-term planning; it is substituting for long-term planning the shifting of particular programmes, such as the AIDS programme that my noble friend Lord Fowler referred to. “What can we do? What can we spend this money on? Right, let’s do the AIDS thing because that is ready to fly, and we will defer this other one because we will not then be able to afford it”. Everything is geared towards meeting the 0.7% target.
12.15 pm