To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his written ministerial statement of 8 December 2008, Official Report, column 30WS, on the NHS Operating Framework, what weighting is given to age in each year’s allocations to primary care trusts. (243769)

Revenue allocations to primary care trusts (PCTs) in 2009-10 and 2010-11 have been informed by the new weighted capitation formula recommended by the independent Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. The weighted capitation formula is used to determine PCTs’ target allocations, and gives older people a much higher weighting than those in their twenties and thirties.

Around 30 per cent. of the variation in target allocations per head between PCTs is estimated to be due to differences in the ages of PCTs’ populations. Actual allocations to PCTs depend also on pace of change policy; how quickly PCTs are brought closer towards their target allocations through the distribution of additional funding. Due to pace of change policy, it is not possible to estimate how much variation in actual allocations between PCTs is due to age.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his Written Ministerial Statement of 8 December 2008, Official Report, column 30WS, on the NHS Operating Framework, if he will provide a breakdown by financial year of the £800 million drawdown of the NHS surplus; and by what mechanism the drawdown will take place. (243770)

The aggregate surplus delivered in 2008-09 by strategic health authorities (SHAs) and primary care trusts (PCTs) will be carried forward into 2009-10. This surplus will start to be deployed in a planned and managed way and will probably total some £800 million over the two financial years, 2009-10 and 2010-11.

The mechanism that will be used to deploy the surplus is through each SHA area determining and agreeing with the Department the level of accumulated surplus deployment required for 2009-10 and 2010-11 based on their local planning requirements.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health for what reasons primary care trusts are not receiving an increase in their resource budgets equivalent to the increases in his Department’s resource budgets for (a) 2008-09, (b) 2009-10 and (c) 2010-11. (243836)

The additional resources that primary care trusts (PCTs) received in 2008-09 were not limited to the 5.5 per cent. uplift in revenue allocations. In addition, the Department allocated a further £1.7 billion of central budgets direct to PCTs thereby increasing the proportion of the total NHS revenue budget that is allocated direct to PCTs.

In 2009-10 the Department will hold an unallocated sum for contingencies, on a non-recurrent basis. These will be released over the year, over and above the 5.5 per cent. allocations growth. Decisions on 2010-11 central contingencies will be made as part of the planning process for 2010-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what percentage of his Department’s revenue budget has been allocated to primary care trusts for each year from 1996-97 to 2010-11. (243838)

The requested statistics are shown in the following table.