Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of poverty on NHS spending.

Integrated care boards receive funding allocations from NHS England to pay for the services they commission. Most funding is allocated as a non-ringfenced budget, informed by a calculation of what would constitute a “fair share” of funding based on a formula that takes account of population, age, need, deprivation and health inequalities considerations.

Poverty will clearly have a bearing on these factors included in the formula, and to the extent that is the case, areas with higher levels of poverty will receive higher funding per capita other things being equal.