Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the allocation of commissioning resources for 2015-16, for what reason the allocation for (a) NHS Oldham is 49 per cent below target, (b) Greater Manchester is two per cent below target, (c) NHS Isle of Wight is 18.02 per cent above target, (d) NHS West London is 31.52 per cent above target and (e) NHS Westminster is 26.24 per cent above target; and if he will make a statement.

Decisions on clinical commissioning group (CCG) allocations are taken independently by NHS England, which agreed its approach to allocations for 2015-16 at its board meeting on 17 December 2014. The details of NHS England’s proposals may be found at:

http://www.england.nhs.uk/2014/12/12/board-meet-17-dec14/.

Every CCG in England continues to benefit from stable above-inflation increases in funding for 2015-16. NHS England’s policy has been to maximise funding growth for those CCGs furthest below target, with the aim that no CCG should be more than 5% below target allocation from the beginning of 2017-18.

For comparison, NHS Oldham CCG (which is currently 0.49% below target) received an increase in funding of 2.79% for 2015-16, whilst Greater Manchester CCGs, as a whole, received a 4.14% increase in funding. NHS Isle of Wight CCG, NHS West London CCG and NHS Westminster CCG all received 1.94% increases in funding which is the minimum level of funding increase agreed by NHS England for 2015-16. The number of CCGs more than 5% below target has been halved from 34 to 17 in 2015-16.