Should the Department of Health approve NHS capital projects worth up to £300m without Treasury sign-off?

The vote split cleanly along generational lines, and the older half of the electorate simply didn't buy it. The 25-34s were the only cohort to warm to letting the Department of Health wave through £300m of capital spending without the Treasury looking over its shoulder, while every group from 45 upward voted no almost to a person, leaving the measure defeated two to one.

Gender told a similar story from a different angle: men were roughly split, but women rejected the idea by more than five to one, a gulf far sharper than the age divide alone would predict. Whatever mix of instinct and experience is doing the work, this was not a chamber inclined to trust departmental self-certification over Treasury discipline.

The result lands squarely on Britain's oldest fiscal fault line — the tension between "cut the bureaucracy" and "who guards the guardians" — and suggests that even a popular cause like RAAC removal and neighbourhood health centres doesn't buy public patience for weakening Treasury oversight. Voters here seem readier to fund the NHS's rebuilding than to hand it the keys to the vault.

For a plan sold as freeing the NHS from red tape, the chamber's answer was: keep the tape.