Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the document entitled Fair pay agreement consultation impact assessment, published in October 2025, if he will award an interim uplift to the pay of frontline care workers in the 2026-27 and 2027-28 financial years to address the immediate workforce recruitment and retention challenges before a negotiated fair pay agreement is implemented in the 2028-29 financial year.

Under the Employment Rights Bill, the Government will set up the Fair Pay Agreement, establishing a form of sectoral collective bargaining which will empower employers, worker representatives, and others in partnership to negotiate fair pay, and terms and conditions.

The Government is taking steps to establish Fair Pay Agreements. These steps are essential to getting this right and ensuring meaningful reform for the adult social care sector. This includes our public consultation, which closes on 16 January.

This will support the delivery of our Plan to Make Work Pay, which is already delivering for care workers through changes to the minimum wage, putting more money into their pockets. The Employment Rights Bill will also end exploitative zero-hours contracts, with one in five carers on a zero-hour contract, and give workers rights to statutory sick pay from day one of absence due to illness.

Currently, most workers are employed by private sector providers who set their pay and terms and conditions, independent of the Government.

We know this is an issue now, and in the meantime the Government is making available approximately £4.6 billion of funding for adult social care in 2028/29 compared to 2025/26, to support the sector in making improvements. This includes £500 million for the Fair Pay Agreement, the most significant investment in improving pay and conditions for adult social care staff to date.