Health Funding

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Walmsley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they carried out an equality impact assessment before deciding on the recent in-year budget cut to public health funding.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, we pay close attention to equalities considerations when deciding how to distribute the public health grant between local authorities. The Department of Health is about to consult on how to implement the savings and we will address our equalities duties in full when announcing our final decisions.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, but given that these cuts will impact on teenage pregnancy programmes for the young, domestic violence programmes for women, HIV prevention programmes for gay men and some members of the BME community and TB prevention programmes for the poor and homeless, will he say where the equality is in that?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness will know that decisions on these matters are left to local authorities, and we wish to give them as much discretion as we can.