Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) has been spent on health care in (a) England and (b) the UK in each year since 1997; and what estimate he has made of the proportion of GDP that will be spent on health care over the next five years.

Spend as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) is usually reported on a United Kingdom basis. HM Treasury publishes UK health spend figures as a percentage of GDP which are shown below. Note this excludes private health expenditure.

Spend on health in UK as % of GDP –

1996/97 – 5.0%

1997/98 – 5.0%

1998/99 – 5.0%

1999/00 – 5.0%

2000/01 – 5.2%

2001/02 – 5.6%

2002/03 – 5.8%

2003/04 – 6.2%

2004/05 – 6.5%

2005/06 – 6.7%

2006/07 – 6.6%

2007/08 – 6.7%

2008/09 – 7.2%

2009/10 – 7.8%

2010/11 – 7.6%

2011/12 – 7.4%

2012/13 – 7.5%

2013/14 – 7.5%

2014/15 – 7.4%

Source: Table 4.4 HMT, Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2015.

The Spending Review settlement, delivered by the Chancellor on 25 November, set the Department’s overall budget for the remaining years of the parliament and the level of funding that will be available to the National Health Service. It set absolute spending totals, not spending as a percentage of GDP, providing certainty for financial planning over the period. The Department has not therefore made forecasts for health spending as a share of GDP for future years.

GDP figures are calculated on an economy wide basis, so GDP figures for England are not available to calculate spend on health care in England as a share of English GDP.