Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding her Department has provided to the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department allocates resource funding to NHS England who then use that to fund a series of local budgets, managed by integrated care boards (ICBs) and national budgets, managed by NHS England themselves.
ICBs then use those agreed budgets to fund the purchase of healthcare services for their local population, mostly from NHS providers.
The Department does not hold a breakdown of the sources of income received by individual trusts, but for the years requested the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust reported the following total income for its services in their year-end accounts:
Financial Year | Operating income from patient care activities (£000) | Other operating income (£000) |
2022/23 | £708,886 | £48,792 |
2021/22 | £638,695 | £41,499 |
2020/21 | £531,696 | £112,182 |
2019/20 | £475,065 | £64,183 |
2018/19 | £413,754 | £33,738 |
2017/18 | £394,512 | £38,649 |
2016/17 | £392,427 | £44,897 |
2015/16 | £386,840 | £36,588 |
2014/15 | £395,007 | £38,243 |
Source: The United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust published annual report and accounts, 2014/15 to 2022/23.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the North Central London Integrated Care Board's consultation entitled Start Well which closed on 17 March 2024, whether she has made an assessment of the effectiveness of the patient flow modelling methods used within that consultation.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The North Central London Integrated Care Board advise that the patient flow modelling approach was based on the combination of geographical proximity and service user choice.
The patient flow approach was tested with the Clinical Reference Group, Finance and Analytics Group, and Start Well Programme Board. The outputs were also tested with the Strategy Leads from each organisation, and the approach reviewed and assured by the London Clinical Senate and NHS England.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what mechanism she plans to use to ringfence NHS dentistry budgets in financial year 2024-25.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes and we will ringfence this funding in 2024 to 2025. We will issue guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly through NHS England’s 2024 to 2025 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with and collect monthly returns from all ICBs to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to paragraph 2.20 of the Spring Budget 2024, HC 560, if he will take steps to ensure the (a) governance and (b) accountability of the £3.4 billion allocated to the NHS.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Government and NHS England have been working closely together on plans to improve productivity following the publication of the Long Term Workforce Plan last summer, including on the announcement last week of £3.4bn additional investment allowing the NHS to commit to a significant increase in productivity growth.
This investment will continue to remain subject to close work between Government and NHS, recognising its importance for ensuring the NHS’s sustainability and ability to deliver better outcomes for patients.
To support delivery of the productivity programme, Spring Budget also highlighted that an external expert advisory panel will be convened to ensure that technological and digital transformation plans have the support and challenge to deliver on its goals, with NHS England also starting reporting against new productivity metrics regularly from the second half of 2024-25. Further detail will be set out in due course
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the level of underspend was for dentistry in each integrated care board in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes, and will ringfence this funding in 2024 to 2025. We will issue guidance to the integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly, through NHS England’s 2024 to 2025 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with, and collect monthly returns from, all ICBs, to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget. Data is not held centrally for dental budgets in prior years.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support students with the cost of living.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The department has frozen maximum tuition fees for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years to deliver better value for students. By the 2024/25 academic year, maximum fees will have been frozen for 7 years.
The government has continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living and other costs each year. Maximum support has been increased by 2.8% for the current 2023/24 academic year, with a further 2.5% increase announced for 2024/25.
Students awarded a loan for living costs for the 2023/24 academic year that is lower than the maximum, and whose household income for the tax year 2023/24 has dropped by at least 15% compared to the income provided for their original assessment can apply for their entitlement to be reassessed.
Decisions on student finance have had to be taken to ensure the system remains financially sustainable and the costs of HE are shared fairly between students and taxpayers, not all of whom have benefited from going to university.
The government recognises the additional cost of living pressures that have arisen this year and that are impacting students. The department has already made £276 million of student premium and mental health funding available for the 2023/24 academic year to support successful outcomes for students including disadvantaged students.
The department is making a further £10 million of one-off support available to support student mental health and hardship funding. This funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes.
Further the department is investing hundreds of millions of pounds in additional funding over the three-year period from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to support high-quality teaching and facilities including in science and engineering, subjects that support the NHS, and degree apprenticeships. This includes the largest increase in government funding for the HE sector to support students and teaching in over a decade.
That is why the department has asked the Office for Students (OfS) to maintain student premium and mental health funding for the 2023/24 financial year at the same levels as the previous year and to ensure providers are aware they can draw on the Student Premium to support students in financial hardship. The department will continue to liaise with the OfS on the impacts of cost-of-living pressures.
Between 2022/23 to 2024/25, government will have provided support worth £104 billion, an average of £3,700 per household, to help families throughout the UK with the cost-of-living including to meet increased household energy costs. This will have eased some of the pressure on family budgets and so will in turn enabled many families to provide additional support to their children in HE to help them meet increased living costs.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the budget is for the Smile for Life programme, and if she will publish a breakdown of costs.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
To improve prevention for our youngest children, we will roll out support education targeting one to three year olds in the new Smile for Life programme. We will work closely with local areas to ensure our national advice and educational materials are tailored appropriately for nurseries and other early years settings.
The Dentistry Recovery Plan is fully funded with £200 million, and will deliver new initiatives to address the challenges facing National Health Service dentistry, including an additional 2.5 million appointments.
Overall NHS spending totals will be set at budget in the usual way. We are committed to protecting funding for dentistry purposes and will ringfence dental funding in 2024/25. We will issue guidance to integrated care boards shortly, through NHS England’s 2024/25 revenue finance and contracting guidance.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Guidance on Department for Health and Social Care funding for non-consolidated pay awards in non-annex one organisations published in November 2023, when her Department plans to announce which NHS organisations have been successful in their funding applications.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The outcome of the applications will be communicated directly to the organisations that applied, by the end of the financial year. As this information will be commercially sensitive for these independent organisations, we do not intend to announce which organisations have been successful.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Guidance on Department for Health and Social Care funding for non-consolidated pay awards in non-annex one organisations published in November 2023, which NHS organisations have been approved for funding.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The outcome of the applications will be communicated directly to the organisations that applied, by the end of the financial year. As this information will be commercially sensitive for these independent organisations, we do not intend to announce which organisations have been successful.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the gross annual budget was for NHS dental services before deductions for (a) underspends and (b) underperformance for each year from 2010-11 to the latest year for which data is available.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst data for dental budgets in prior years is not held centrally, we currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes, and will ringfence the funding in 2024/25. We will issue guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly, through NHS England’s 2024/25 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with and collect monthly returns from all ICBs, to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget.