Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 8 August 2025 to Question 67474 on NHS England: Redundancy, when his Department will provide an update on the cost impact of integrating NHS England with the DHSC.

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we are clear on the need for a smaller centre. Reducing the size of the Department and NHS England will ultimately deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of savings that can be recycled into front line care. There will be no direct reduction in frontline staff as a result of these changes.

As part of the transition to the new structure, on Tuesday 11 November, NHS England announced a voluntary redundancy scheme, to allow staff to leave before the merger takes place. The scheme will run from Monday 1 December until 11:59pm on Sunday 14 December.

In making these reductions, we will not be cutting any investment into the NHS or frontline services; the savings made will more than offset the cost of redundancy payments.

We have recently announced the Spending Review settlement which provides an additional £29 billion of annual day-to-day spending in real terms by 2028/29 compared to 2023/24. We are now carefully reviewing how the settlement is prioritised, including making provision for redundancy costs.

The Government is committed to transparency and will consider how best to ensure that the public and parliamentarians are appropriately informed of the relevant information, at the appropriate time. Any publication requirements that become applicable will be complied with as a minimum.