Sadiq Khan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2016-01-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much was spent on (a) sexual health, (b) drug and alcohol and (c) smoking public health initiatives in (i) England and Wales, (ii) London and (iii) each London borough in each year since 2010.

Jane Ellison

Spending in Wales on these initiatives is a matter for the Welsh government.

Local authorities in England took over public health responsibility from April 2013 and are responsible for assessing local need and commissioning services and interventions to meet that need, using the Public Health Grant. They are free to determine their actual spend on services based on this assessment of need, but are required to report their spending on an annual basis. The Department for Communities and Local Government publishes statistics on local authority expenditure and total expenditure for sexual health services, drugs and alcohol services and smoking in England, London and London boroughs for the years 2013/14 and 2014/15. The links to the data are below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing-england-2013-to-2014-individual-local-authority-data-outturn

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing-england-2014-to-2015-individual-local-authority-data-outturn

It is important to note that the expenditure on drug and alcohol services may not reflect all the resources that a local authority may have used on drug and alcohol misuse. For example community care budgets can be used to help people as part of their recovery from drug and/or alcohol dependency.

Prior to April 2013 primary care trusts commissioned public health services and public health expenditure was not published separately. Alcohol misuse services and smoking cessation services were funded from general National Health Service allocations and figures on this spend prior to 2013/14 are not available centrally.

Drug misuse services were funded from the Pooled Treatment Budget and figures for 2010/11 to 2012/13 are available at the links below:

2010-11: http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/adultptballocation2010-11final.pdf

2011-12: http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/drugfunding11-12annexc[0].pdf

2012-13: http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/drugfunding12-13v.xls

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