Personal health budgets may be spent on “laptops and travel passes”

Personal health budgets will give people more control over their care needs, but there should not be an “open ended system of entitlement,” says a senior health official.

Andrew Sanderson, deputy head of the NHS Commissioning Unit, said that once the initiative was rolled out across England there would have to be a way to manage demand.

“It will be important to hold to the principle of people managing cash limited budgets,” he said.

Mr Sanderson was speaking at a Westminster Health Forum seminar on the implementation of personal health budgets, held in London on 15 March.

Early findings from pilot schemes, he said, showed that budget users …