Health chiefs did not get all the extra funding they asked for in last week’s Budget, it has been confirmed.

Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan said that when the DHSC budget was determined, he was ’mindful’ of the supplementary vote that had been required in the current financial year to ensure the books were balanced.

He said that it was important that a budget allocation struck a balance between the funding needed for services and value for money and efficiency in service.

As part of the Budget process, departments could make ’bids’ for extra funding for services in a prioritised format.

The DHSC bid for £6.3 million extra, he said, and received £5.5 million.

The allocation, which included £2.9 million for Noble’s Hospital, took into consideration the department’s own commitment to make £7m savings.

It was ’probably the biggest recognition of a department’s problems’ of any of the requests received by Treasury for extra money, he said.

Mr Cannan was responding to a Tynwald question tabled by Speaker Juan Watterson (Rushen), who wanted to know how the Budget allocation had been arrived at.

The Minister said the allocation was based on the government’s five-year spending plan and departments’ request for additional funding.

Julie Edge (Onchan) suggested the Treasury could make quarterly reports on financial performance in departments to avoid the need for departments to come back to request a supplementary vote on a regular basis, as has happened with the DHSC.

But Mr Cannan said departmental budget spending could fluctuate between quarters, rather than occur in a ’nice consistent pattern’. Items might go into the red in one quarter and be back in the black for the next.

He warned against ’micro-managing’, spreading unnecessary alarm and wasting officers’ ’valuable time’ trying to make up for a quarterly overspend that would have evened itself out through the year anyway.

During the Budget debate last week, Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin) argued the DHSC was having its finances cut.

He said that, when supplementary votes for additional spending were taken into account, the ’probable spend’ for 2017/18, was expected to reach £218m, compared with £216m proposed for 2018/19.

In that same debate, theTreasury Minister said the government had effectively found £37 million of additional funding for the DHSC over the past two years.

The cash-strapped department is undergoing an independent review of its funding and services, following a Tynwald motion in January.

That was instigated by Mr Cannan, in a bid to end the current situation that has seen the department coming back to Tynwald every year to request extra money to cover its costs.