Tynwald has approved £10m in additional funding for the Department of Health and Social Care.

The health minister, Lawrie Hooper MHK, presented the case for the sum at the March sitting of the court.

The DHSC is currently forecasting to be about £7m over budget by the end of the financial year.

It is understood that the reasons for the over-spend in the current year are largely due to ‘unusual costs/activity including a pay award which is currently in negotiation’.

For instance, drug costs have increased significantly during the year to £25.6m, which was £2.6m over budget and is expected to exceed budget by £4.5m by year-end.

And total overspend on the cost treating patients in the UK is expected to be £1.3m.

The request for more money is nothing new: this marks the seventh consecutive year that health services have been over budget.

However, Mr Hooper said a new funding model for 2022-23 should bring that to an end.

As the £10m boost was given approval, the department’s net budget will now increase from £232m to £242m for the year 2021-22.

The DHSC has also already received approval from Treasury to be reimbursed more than £20m from internal funds, mainly in relation to Covid-19 expenditure.

About £6.6m of this total has already been declared as an internal contingency for the forthcoming year.

Manx Care was created in April 2021 and at that point the budget for the DHSC was split between DHSC and the new care provider.

As we reported earlier, pay negotiations are still under way with the health, medical and dental unions and the Manx Pay Terms & Conditions staff.

A pay award of 3% has been offered to match that offered in the UK. This £2.4m over the budgeted 1%.