To ask the Secretary of State for Health who was the contractor, what was the cost, what was the experimental location by district and unit and what was the date of report of all pilot work carried out on the specification of block contracts.

We are funding development work on contracting for services in a number of health authorities. For details of this work I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) on 6 November 1989 at columns 455–56. The projects involve contracting for a range of services in a variety of local circumstances and identifying the most appropriate type of contract to use in these different situations. None of the work is limited explicitly to specifying block contracts.