Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to close the pay gap in the NHS which affects outsourced staff.

It is a matter for individual trusts and foundation trusts to agree with their outsourced service providers what level of pay increase they wish to fund for staff delivering services under contract to the National Health Service. For a number of outsourced services, we are aware that agreements are in place to implement the Agenda for Change (AfC) agreement for their staff.

Funding has been provided for the AfC pay deal to NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts from 2019/20 onwards through the normal funding routes from commissioners. This funding also covers services that trusts and foundation trusts have chosen to outsource.