Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of funding the outstanding retrospective claims under the continuing care programme; what interest rate is being applied to such claims; and what estimate he has made of the average cost to the public purse of those outstanding claims.

The estimated cost of reimbursement for the outstanding claims from periods of care between 1 April 2004 and 31 March 2012 is £14.5 million. Data on claims for previously unassessed periods of care from 1 April 2012 is not held.

The ‘NHS Continuing Healthcare Refreshed Redress Guidance’, published on 1 April 2015, advises clinical commissioning groups to calculate interest using the Retail Price Index. The estimated average cost per claim is £23,000.