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Cancer
Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much of the recently financed extra money for cancer care will be targeted in (a) the West Midlands and (b) Coventry. [144973]
Yvette Cooper: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently announced a national investment of £450 million earmarked for cancer and heart services which will help to raise standards of care and cut waiting times for treatment.
Each health authority, in consultation with National Health Service trusts, will need to draw up an agreed policy for cancer services and report on their plans to use the money through the service and financial framework process.
Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much of the recently announced extra money for cancer care will be targeted at specific forms of cancer; and which research institutes and sites of excellence will benefit from the additional money. [144974]
Yvette Cooper: The NHS Plan announced that health authorities will receive an additional £280 million in 2001-02, £407 million in 2002-03 and £570 million by 2003-04 for improving cancer services as set out in the National Health Service cancer plan.
The plan sets out the priorities for cancer services including improved prevention measures; increasing the cancer work force; reducing waiting times for diagnosis and treatment; introducing the most effective treatments (including implementing recommendations by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence on anti-cancer drugs and implementing evidence-based guidance on
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effective service delivery); updating cancer equipment, and reorganising delivery of care. The aim is that, as the plan is implemented, patients with all forms of cancer will experience prompt access to treatment and care based on up-to-date evidence. Early action will include implementation of recent and forthcoming guidance on upper gastrointestinal, urological and haematological cancers; new waiting times targets to ensure rapid access to treatment for people with breast cancer, childhood cancers, testicular cancer and leukaemia; and the start of the roll out of the breast screening programme to women aged 65-70.
All centres of research excellence will benefit from the extra money announced for cancer care. In addition by 2003, we will be investing an additional £20 million each year in the new National Cancer Research Network
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(NCRN) and an extra £4 million each year on prostate cancer research. The NCRN will, among many other things, further integrate research and cancer care.
Health Authority Funding
Mr. Andrew George: To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 18 December 2000, Official Report column 43W, on Government funding to health authorities, how much the funding allocation has been to each health authority per unweighted head of population for (a) 1999-2000, (b) 2000-01 and (c) the percentage rise or fall between the two years. [145368]
Mr. Denham: Health authority allocations per unweighted head of population for 1999-2000, 2000-01, and the percentage increase between the two years are given in the table.
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(17) Figures between the two years are not comparable due to the merger of the former North West Anglia HA into the new HAs of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.
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Autism
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much money was spent in the NHS in the last year for which figures are available on treating people with autism; what research his Department has commissioned and is undertaking into the causes of autism; and if he will make a statement. [145420]
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Mr. Hutton: Data on National Health Service expenditure on treating people with autism are not held centrally.
There is a large volume of research on all aspects of autism. Details of projects can be found on the National Research Register (NRR), which also contains information on projects and trials funded by the Medical
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Research Council (MRC) and other research funders. The NRR shows that there are currently 51 ongoing and 82 completed projects on autism. The MRC (which is funded mainly by the Government) recently announced that it has provided £344,000 to fund one of the largest studies of the causes of autism ever attempted.
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children suffer from autism; and what proportion this represents of children (a) in total and (b) in each region. [145422]
Mr. Hutton: It is widely accepted that the estimated prevalence rate of classic autism is between four and five per 10,000 population. Prevalence of all autistic spectrum disorders is more difficult to estimate but could be as high as 91 per 10,000. These incidence figures would imply that, in England, between 5,000 and 6,000 children up to 18 years of age are affected by classic autism and that up to 110,000 children may be affected by autistic spectrum disorders. We have no evidence of variations in the incidence of autism across regions.
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