Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to devolve increased employer pension contributions to local clinical commissioning groups.

We intend in due course to devolve funding for the increased employer contribution rate in the NHS Pension Scheme although a date has not yet been set. For 2019/20, the Department, NHS England and NHS Improvement and the NHS Business Services Authority agreed a transitional arrangement to distribute the pensions revaluation funding following an increase to the employer contribution rate from 14.38% (inclusive of the 0.08% administration levy) to 20.68% from 1 April 2019.

The employer contribution cost arrangements for 2020/21 will be confirmed in the 2020/21 Operational Planning Guidance document which will be released towards the end of January 2020.