Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide additional resources to the NHS to fund (a) an additional pay award uplift for NHS staff and (b) additional technology and diagnostic capacity.

The Pay Review Body (PRB) process is the established process for determining pay uplifts for all public sector workers including National Health Service staff. We have committed to give NHS workers a pay rise for 2023/24, asking the PRBs for recommendations on pay for staff in scope. As the PRBs are independent, we cannot pre-empt their recommendations, and we will carefully consider their reports when we receive them later this year.

£2.3 billion was awarded at Spending Review 2021 to transform diagnostic services over the next three years. Most of this will help increase the number of Community Diagnostic Centres to up to 160 by March 2025, expanding and protecting elective planned diagnostic services. The remainder of the funding will increase capacity for imaging, endoscopy as well as lung and mammography screening and improve digital diagnostics.

On technology, the implementation plan for the Medtech Strategy seeks to streamline capacity for innovation adoption via an end-to-end innovation pipeline. Details will be published later this year.