Question
To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Lord Darzi of Denham on 29 June (WA 15) indicating that officials at the Department of Health did not meet the Macfarlane Trust to discuss financial or other details of the Government's response to Lord Archer of Sandwell's report prior to the publication of their response, whether their assessment of the average level of disbursement to the Macfarlane Trust's beneficiaries at £6,400 was the average level of disbursement to both the infected and non-infected beneficiary community.
Answer
I refer the noble Lord to my earlier reply (WA 15) which said that a broad indicator of the annual level of benefit currently available through the Macfarlane Trust was calculated by dividing the total number of beneficiaries both infected and non-infected into the total expenditure of the trusts, the result being an overall average of £6,400. The Macfarlane Trust has made representations showing average disbursements to infected beneficiaries based on different denominators. Such calculations provide helpful, but broad, indicators of the typical level of benefit currently available to different categories of beneficiary.