Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of giving the NHS Staff Council a mandate to negotiate NHS partial retirement and statutory redundancy payments with trade unions.

This specific assessment has not been made.

Partial retirement does not mean that National Health Service staff are ineligible for redundancy payments. However, taking partial retirement may change the way in which contractual redundancy payments are calculated.

The rules concerning the calculation of redundancy payments for NHS staff who have previously taken pension benefits, are determined in accordance with their contracts of employment, and statutory redundancy entitlements.

Contractual redundancy provisions for staff covered by the NHS terms and conditions of service handbook, also referred to as Agenda for Change, in England were agreed and ratified in partnership by the NHS Staff Council, the collective bargaining structure made up of trade union and employer representatives.

These provisions are set out under Section 16 of the NHS staff terms and conditions of service handbook. This section states that service used for the purposes of calculating previous pension benefits will not count for the calculation of a contractual redundancy payment. Statutory redundancy entitlements are unaffected.

The Department commissions NHS Employers to provide guidance for employers on a range of topics, including NHS redundancy arrangements and retirement options for NHS staff.