Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance her Department provides to (a) NHS employees considering retire-and-return arrangements regarding the potential effect of accessing their NHS pension on their future contractual redundancy entitlement and (b) to NHS employers on ensuring that staff are informed of any significant reduction in redundancy protection before making a decision to retire and return.

No assessment has been made of the potential merits of introducing transitional protections or alternative arrangements for staff who have previously claimed pension benefits.

Redundancy terms for National Health Service staff on the Agenda for Change contract in England are set out under Section 16 of the NHS Staff Terms and Conditions of Service handbook, a set of terms collectively agreed by national collective bargaining structures including the NHS Staff Council. This also applies to other NHS staff whose redundancy terms refer to Section 16 of the Agenda for Change contract in England.

Claiming pension benefits, such as via retire and return, does not mean that NHS staff are ineligible for redundancy payments. However, taking pension benefits may change the way in which contractual redundancy payments are calculated.

The handbook 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, which they can then use to communicate with their staff.