Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate (a) his Department and (b) HM Treasury have made of the cost to (i) his Department's Departmental Expenditure Limit and (ii) NHS organisations of the recently announced NHS pay deal; and whether that cost was included in the baseline NHS England budget used to calculate that the NHS England’s budget would be £394 million a week higher in real terms by 2023-24.

The Government has previously confirmed that it would make available £4.2 billion to fund the three year pay deal for those staff employed under the Agenda for Change contract.

The 2018-19 baseline for the recent five-year funding agreement for the National Health Service has been uplifted by £800 million to take account of additional funding that the Government will provide to the NHS in the current financial year to cover Agenda for Change pay deal costs. The additional funding to cover Agenda for Change pay deal costs in 2019-20 and 2020-21 is included within the planned additions to resource budgets for NHS England in 2019-20 and 2020-21.

More information on the recent announcement of the five-year funding agreement for the NHS can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-sets-out-5-year-nhs-funding-plan