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 NHS trusts do not have to (a) reduce substantive staff posts and (b) scale back service provision to meet operational priorities in 2025-26.

We have changed the National Health Service operating model to devolve power to local leaders. The Darzi investigation highlighted that there were too many targets set for the NHS, which made it hard for local systems to prioritise their actions or be held properly accountable. 2025/26 NHS Planning Guidance therefore stripped back instructions to the NHS.

These clear and concise instructions will allow local leaders to focus on the job of meeting patients’ needs and improving the communities they serve. We are giving more freedom and autonomy to good leaders, including clinical leaders and managers in the NHS who are coming up with some of the best ways of improving productivity gains in the system.

2025/26 Planning Guidance was clear that the 2025/26 financial year needs to mark a financial reset for the NHS, and that systems must develop plans, including for the numbers of substantive staff, that are affordable within the allocations set, exhausting all opportunities to improve productivity and tackle waste, and take decisions on how to prioritise resources to best meet the health needs of their local population. The NHS England Chief Executive also set out, on 1 April, further actions to lay the foundations for reform, including halving the growth in corporate costs in providers since 2018/19.