Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the proposed NHS pay award works favourably for charitable hospices whose staff are not employed on an Agenda for Change contract.

We recognise that the hospice sector faces particular challenges in relation to funding, given the need to consider pay rates for nursing staff in the light of the Agenda for Change pay agreement.

Organisations that must implement the entire pay deal, not just headline pay, will receive additional funding for 2018/19 directly. However, from 2019/20 funding is included in the long-term funding settlement and will be provided through the NHS England mandate.

It will be a matter for NHS England to consider arrangements for hospice funding as part of the National Health Service long-term plan linked to the funding settlement that will see funding for the NHS rise by an average 3.4% per year; £20.5 billion a year extra in real terms by 2023.

We expect that clinical commissioning groups and NHS England, who commission hospice services, will consider pay pressures as part of wider contract discussions.