Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

1. How much funding he plans to allocate to local authorities to perform new public health duties in each of the next four years.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. How much funding he plans to allocate to local authorities to perform new public health duties in each of the next four years.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

9. How much funding he plans to allocate to local authorities to perform new public health duties in each of the next four years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger]

Will the Secretary of State give us more detail on how local authorities will be incentivised to innovate in public health, given that hospitals rather than councils will benefit financially from better public health?

[Mr Lansley]

In the first instance, local authorities have the direct incentive that they represent the people who elect them and so will want to use the public health resources available to them to deliver the best possible public health services to their local population. The intention of our proposals, which has been very strongly supported, not least by the British Medical Association, the Faculty of Public Health, the Local Government Association and others, is to put public health resources alongside the range of responsibilities of local authorities which will have the greatest impact on the overall determinants of health: education, employment, housing, environment, transport and the like.