Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2017 to Question 58880, whether any funding was allocated to support the NHS in implementing the advised changes in the management and care of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma; and in what financial years such funding was allocated.

No specific funding has been allocated to implement the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Asthma Outcomes Strategy.

The National Health Service allocates funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) based on the age profile and needs of their population. For core CCG allocations, this includes a component for general and acute services. Spending on specific conditions is down to local clinical priorities set by the CCGs themselves.

The General and Acute model, which is part of the CCG allocations formula, uses person-level hospital data to estimate the need and cost for acute hospital services. Therefore, if an area has high diagnoses of COPD and asthma, the model will estimate higher need for these and more money will be allocated accordingly. COPD, as part of chronic lower respiratory diseases, was included as one of the 152 morbidity / diagnosis indicators as a significant variable. It should be noted that these findings are part of larger sets joined together for use in the overall allocations formula.