Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to reduce health spending inequalities between (a) the UK and other European countries and (b) UK health authority districts.

Based on the latest internationally comparable Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, total health spending in the United Kingdom, as set out by the OECD for 2014 (published 30 June 2016), and which includes public (Government) and private spend, is at 9.9% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), above the OECD average1 of 9.0% and the EU-15 average of 9.8%.

Reducing health spending inequalities is part of the core formula that is used to determine the funding that is allocated to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), which are the equivalent of UK health authority districts in England. Responsibility for CCG allocations rests with NHS England. NHS England also has a duty to reduce health inequalities.

The formula includes an adjustment for unmet need and health inequalities, which has been refined for 2016-17 to 2020-21 allocations.

The unmet need and health inequalities adjustment continues to be based on the standardised mortality ratio for those aged under 75 years. The latest data has been used and the adjustment refined to give a higher weight per head to the areas with the worst standardised mortality ratio for those aged under 75 years and to be based on the size of each CCG’s registered lists in place of Office for National Statistics populations, on which it was previously based.

NHS England has published a technical guide to allocations which sets out all the individual factors used in determining the allocation levels. The guide is available here:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/04/allocations-tech-guide-16-17/#

Funding for other parts of the UK is a matter for the devolved administrations.

Note:

¹The reported averages reflect the simple average of countries’ figures without weighting that for population or GDP of the respective countries.