To ask the Secretary of State for Health
(1) how much interest the NHS paid on pre-existing debts in the latest year for which figures are available;
(2) what (a) targets she has set and (b) guidance her Department has given to primary care trusts on repayment of pre-existing debt.
Interest paid on pre-existing debts cannot be separately identified from interest paid on debts incurred in the year, therefore, the information requested is not collected centrally.
All National Health Service trusts and primary care trusts should breakeven every year. NHS trusts have a financial breakeven duty to balance their income and expenditure over a three or, in exceptional circumstances, five-year period. Strategic health authorities (SHAs) have the discretion to agree a recovery plan that will return them to balance over this period. However, as SHAs have the responsibility for ensuring the NHS organisations across their areas are in financial balance every year, if they agree to one organisation overspending, they require another NHS organisation within the health economy to underspend over the same period. Any such arrangements would have to be subject to the agreement of local providers.
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