Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Bethell (HL Deb, cols 248 and 253), what measure of inflation they used in the cash figures for the four financial years included in the NHS Funding Bill.

Under the NHS Funding Bill 2019-20, the Government commits to increase investment in the National Health Service in the years to 2023-24 (compared with 2018-19) by £33.9 billion in cash terms.

At the time the NHS settlement was confirmed in January 2019, real terms growth calculations used the GDP Deflator forecasts, as set out in the Economic and Fiscal Outlook in October 2018.

The NHS funding settlement was fixed in cash terms and it is these cash budgets that underpin the NHS Long Term Plan.