Yorkshire health trusts ‘to lose out by £100m’

THE Government will slash more than £100m from Yorkshire health trusts’ budgets while increasing spending in wealthy areas of the South, new research has claimed.

Labour said changes to funding formulas will result in 10 primary care trusts in the region having their budgets cut, while Surrey, Kensington, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire will enjoy a cash boost.

For years areas which have higher incidences of poor health have been given higher per capita funding, but this weighting is set to be reduced.

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The study, produced by Public Health Manchester for the Parliamentary Health Select Committee, has heaped more pressure on the Government. Transport and local government funding allocations were also claimed to strongly favour the South, while public sector cuts have also hit the North harder, the vast majority of new private sector jobs being created in London and the wider South East.

The Yorkshire Post has launched the Fair Deal for Yorkshire campaign calling for a more even distribution of funds, but despite claims from Whitehall that the economy would be rebalanced, Wentworth MP and Shadow Health Secretary John Healey said yet again the region was losing out.

He said: “These shocking figures reveal that the Tories’ plans for the NHS will make inequality worse, not better. They are reducing funding to tackle poor health in the least healthy parts of the country, and shifting it to better off, healthier areas.

“Less well-off areas in Yorkshire will be among the biggest losers – with cash transferred instead to places like Hertfordshire, Hampshire and Surrey.

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“Once again we’re seeing David Cameron and his government failing to give a fair deal to people in Yorkshire.”

Labour’s assessment of the funding reforms was strongly disputed by the Government, and the Department of Health claimed the figures were “misleading”.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley called Labour’s allegations “nonsense” and said all areas were getting budget increases. He claimed every area would have suffered health funding cuts under Labour.

Mr Lansley said figures showed NHS spending was going up in real terms across England as a whole, and that Labour would not have matched that commitment if it had won the election.

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He said: “We’re not taking money away from any parts of England, we’re increasing the budget for the health service in England. The average increase in each primary care trust is three per cent, compared with its provision the previous year.

“The minimum increase is two- and-a-half percent and actually the minimum increase is going to Kingston upon Thames in London, which is hardly a poor area.”

The Public Health Manchester document assesses the long-term impact of the Government’s decision to change the way in which money is allocated to primary care trusts so that it gives less weighting to health inequalities.

The study found that in Yorkshire the care trusts that would lose out included Barnsley, losing £14.7m, Hull would lose £13.2m, Wakefield £14.8m, Doncaster £15.5m, Rotherham £10.1m, Sheffield £14.2m, Bradford and Airedale, £12.8m, Leeds £10.8m, Kirklees £5.4m and Calderdale £4.4m.

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However, the research claimed that Surrey will gain £61.4m, Kensington and Chelsea gain £11.2m, Hampshire £52m, Oxfordshire £22.1m and Hertfordshire £39.7m.

The report said: “The reduction of the health inequalities weighting is a Ministerial judgment rather than an evidence based recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation.

“This change could be interpreted as a reduction in the priority of tackling health inequalities and could be seen as contradicting the aspirations described in the recent White Papers.”