Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to require NHS trusts to benchmark executive pay increases against salaries at similarly performing NHS trusts.

The Government has been clear that senior staff must set an example of pay restraint. The latest independent report on executive pay in the National Health Service from Incomes Data Services shows that for the third year running median salary increases for non-medical executive directors in the NHS were zero.

The policy of this and previous Governments is to allow NHS foundation trusts freedom to set their own rates of pay for their executive directors, based on the assessment of their independent remuneration committees of what is necessary to recruit, retain and motivate these staff. NHS trusts, as organisations seeking to achieve foundation trust status, are subject to oversight of their performance by the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA). This includes scrutiny of their executive pay. The TDA has obtained information from all NHS trusts on the numbers of staff paid more than £100,000 per annum and the pay of staff in five executive positions also over £100,000. They have used this information to benchmark the data against comparable organisations. NHS trusts are advised by TDA to bring salaries which are outside the normal range, in line with this range when filling any future vacancies.