Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the expenditure at constant prices of the Better Care Fund for each financial year since its inception; what is the expected expenditure of that Fund in the current year; and what is the forecast expenditure for financial year 2020/21.

The total expenditure through the Better Care Fund (BCF) from 2015-16 to 2018-19 in nominal and constant prices is set out in the following table. This includes National Health Service clinical commissioning group (CCG) contributions, the Disabled Facilities Grant, the improved BCF and additional voluntary NHS and local government contributions.

In 2019-20, the BCF will be a minimum of £6.422 billion in nominal prices. This excludes voluntary contributions, which were over £2 billion in 2018-19.

For 2020-21, the 2019 Spending Round announced that the NHS CCG minimum allocations would continue into 2020-21 with a real-terms increase of 3.4%, and that the improved Better Care Fund would be maintained at flat cash.