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 prior to publication of the Government's response to the Archer report, whether the average level of disbursement to the Macfarlane Trust's infected beneficiary community was £8,600 in the financial year ended 31 March 2009, as represented in the submission from the Macfarlane Trust dated 1 July 2009.
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.