BMJ report: Only a fifth of NHS underspend will be carried into next year's budget

BMJ report: Only a fifth of NHS underspend will be carried into next year's budget:
According to a report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the NHS in England underspent its budget by £1.7bn in 2011-12; however only 18% of this (£0.3bn) was surrendered through the budget exchange system, which allows departments that underspend (up to a "reasonable limit") in any financial year to get an equivalent increase the next year. The same happened the previous year, when the NHS underspend was £900m, of which only £400m was rolled over, the rest going back to the Treasury.
The Department of Health says that a large part of the 2011-12 underspend was the result of cuts in management costs of £1bn and in spending on information technology by £0.4bn. The health minister commented that the amount spent on "frontline services" in 2011-12 had risen by £3.4bn, and that "While spending has increased on patients, we have reduced inefficient spending, saving over £1.5bn on bureaucracy and IT". British Medical Journal (BMJ)