Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on including age as a criterion for decisions on health funding.
At a national level, demographic projections including the effect of ageing feed into projections for demand growth, which inform decisions on National Health Service funding.
The allocation of funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) is informed by the estimation of the relative health needs of local areas, based on a formula. The formula is based on independent academic research and includes the factors statistically associated with higher or lower need per head for NHS services.
The funding formula is based on the expected size of the population of each CCG and adjustments, or weights, per head for relative need for health care services and unavoidable costs between CCGs.