§ Dr. GibsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if the will make a statement on the proportion of the total health budget allocated to health promotion. [34014]
§ Ms JowellHealth promotion is an integral part of the National Health Service and features in one form or another in nearly all contacts between patients and health care professionals. Much of this activity is not, however, separately or comprehensively identified in NHS accounts, nor separately allocated at the beginning of the year.
Advice on healthy living and disease prevention is intrinsic to the activity of general medical and primary health care teams. Most consultations in primary care will include an element of opportunistic health promotion. The cash-limited and non-cash-limited total general medical services allocation for 1997/98 is £3,055 million.
There is a centrally held budget for health education and promotion campaigns which is separately allocated. In 1997/98, the Department allocated £43.6 million to health promotion nationally, of which the Health Education Authority received £39.1 million.
Health authorities and trusts do not receive a specific allocation for health promotion. Provisional figures for 1996/97, the most recent year available, show that expenditure by NHS trusts and health authorities on health education and promotion was £79.6 million, but this figure excludes those functions of health authorities and trusts which indirectly support health promotion.