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modifications of detail. Annex E provides a comparison in tabular form. The major difficulty however encountered in dealing with the MDAC proposals has been that presented by the budgetary position. This is dealt with in paragraphs 6-8 below. In the light of this situation, the full implementation of the proposals will take longer than was envisaged by the MDAC.
Budgetary position
6
The financial implications of the proposals are discussed in Chapter 13 of the draft White Paper. To implement all the proposals, the full capital cost is estimated at $914 million at mid-1974 prices and would involve roughly doubling recurrent expenditure on medical and health services to about $900 million a year, also at mid-1974 prices. Spread evenly over ten years, an increase of this magnitude would be significant in budgetary terms. In practice the increase would be concentrated largely in the second half of the period, thus adding to this significance.
7
As indicated in paragraph 13.3 of the draft White Paper, the majority of the proposals would fall after 1977-78 but before 1983-84. Some of the proposals were included in the Financial Secretary's budget speech estimate of $25,000 million for capital expenditure for the ten years ending 1983-84. This total included $669 million for medical projects, $245 million less than the sum required for the implementation of all the proposals in the draft White Paper.
Implications of the budgetary situation
8
The proposals in the draft White Paper have been divided into those for which funds are likely to be available over the next ten years given some increase in taxation, and those for which funds cannot be assumed but which should proceed if the revenue position and competing bids so allow (paragraph 13.4 of the draft White Paper). In these circumstances the date to be envisaged for the completion of the first "phase" of the proposals should be shifted from the end of
1982 (mentioned in the MDAC special remit) to mid-1984.
9
Because of the complexity of the Public Works Programme and the need to correlate capital and recurrent expenditure proposals with the resources likely to be available the object in Chapter 13 of the draft White Paper is to identify the priorities for development by indicating (a) those projects which should be included in the "first phase" and (b) the order of priority proposed for the "second phase'
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