Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to compensate hospices in order to ensure that the recent NHS pay rise and proposed pension changes do not adversely impact those hospices' ability to fund activities.

In July 2018 the Department set out eligibility criteria for non-National Health Service organisations to apply for additional funding to implement the Agenda for Change (AfC) deal in 2018/19. The criteria requires non-NHS organisations, including hospices, to provide NHS services and employ existing and new staff on the AfC contract. In addition, that the NHS services they provided are funded by the Hospital and Community Health Services or Public Health Grant funding. Funding is linked to the direct costs of implementing the entire AfC pay deal which includes pay and non-pay reforms, not just headline pay.

For the final two years of the deal, 2019/20 and 2020/21, funding has been provided to NHS England as part of the Long Term Plan. While we cannot intervene in local contracting arrangements, we expect that commissioners and hospices will want to engage in conversations about how extra funding for the final two years of the deal might be passed on, on a similar ‘something for something’ basis which applies to directly employed NHS staff.

In addition to the long-term funding settlement for the NHS, HM Treasury committed to providing extra funding to meet the costs to the NHS arising from the ongoing actuarial valuation of the NHS Pension Scheme. Work is ongoing to ensure the additional cost to participating employers, including hospices, is appropriately funded. Discussions are underway with NHS England and NHS Improvement to determine the optimum method for distributing this funding to NHS commissioners and service providers. Arrangements will be confirmed in due course.