Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has for future NHS staff pay negotiations in terms of (a) groups who will be involved and (b) when such negotiations will take place.

The Government remitted the independent pay review bodies (PRBs) in respect of National Health Service staff on 22 July, which formally began the 2026/27 pay round. This was over two months earlier than last year.

The Pay Review Bodies (PRBs) are independent advisory bodies made up of industry experts who carefully consider evidence submitted to them from a range of stakeholders, including Government and trade unions to make recommendations on headline pay for their remit groups. It is for individual trade unions to decide whether to engage with the PRB process, but we encourage them to do so in order for the PRBs to have the full breadth of evidence available when forming their recommendations.

The PRBs base their recommendations to the Government on a range of factors including the economic context, cost of living, recruitment and retention, morale, and motivation of NHS staff.

The Government carefully considers the independent PRBs’ recommendations once received. Ministers are not obligated to accept these, although the Government did accept the recommendations on headline pay in full for 2024/25 and 2025/26.

As my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, stated on 15 December, the Government is open to discussing multi-year pay deals with trade unions if we can bridge the gap between affordability and expectation.