§ Mr. JackTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the criteria that each NHS Executive regional office uses to determine which health trusts and authorities are judged to have serious financial problems. [7759]
§ Mr. MilburnThe National Health Service Executive assesses the seriousness of financial problems by initially looking at the scale of the financial problem reported (i.e. over £1 million deficit in health authorities and an adverse operating variance of over £0.5 million in trusts). The NHS Executive will supplement this with an assessment of additional factors such as the robustness of recovery plans.