56398 (2024). Francisco Hernandez to the Associate Minister of Health

56398 (2024). Francisco Hernandez to the Associate Minister of Health: What briefings, advice, aide memoires, emails, text messages, memorandums and any other form of communication, broken down by title and date, did the minister, or their departments, if any, send or receive to the Minister of Finance or Minister for Public Services as part of proposing 'savings' as part of the 'baseline savings exercise'?

Hon David Seymour: I am not responsible for any departments as Associate Minister of Health, I am responsible for Pharmac. No savings were required by Pharmac. Instead, I received briefings that indicated that the last Labour/Green Government had left Pharmac’s budget with a $1.7 billion fiscal cliff which would have resulted in risk of loss of access to medicines for New Zealanders. This government solved that fiscal cliff and uplifted Pharmac's funding to allow Pharmac to improve the quality of life for New Zealander's.