§ Mr. SwireTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list per capita spending on the NHS for each region of England in the last 12 months. [22243]
§ Mr. HuttonThe expenditure by weighted head of population for each English region for 2000–01 is shown in the table.
Expenditure by health authorities and primary care trusts Region Per capita spending (£) Northern and Yorkshire 803.52 Trent 810.12 Eastern 803.44 London 886.12 South East 810.94 South West 849.78 West Midlands 794.52 North Western 826.84 England 825.38 Notes:
1. Expenditure is taken from health authority and primary care trust summarisation forms which are prepared on a resource basis and therefore differ from cash allocations in the year. The expenditure is the total spent by the health authority and by the primary care trusts within each region. The majority of General Dental Services expenditure is not included in the health authority or primary care trust accounts and is separately accounted for by the Dental Practice Board.
2. Health authorities and primary care trusts should account for their expenditure on a gross basis. This results in an element of double counting where one body acts as the main commissioner and is then reimbursed by other bodies. The effect of this double counting within the answer cannot be identified.
3. Some health authorities act as lead commissioners for particular specialties which inflates their figures when compared with others and also causes differences between years. Other factors may also distort the figures so the results are therefore not all directly comparable with each other and with answers to similar questions for previous years.
Sources:
Health authority audited summarisation forms 2000–01
Primary care trust audited summarisation schedules 2000–01
Weighted population estimates for 2000–01