Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential implications for his Department's polices of the request of workforce unions for the establishment of direct pay negotiations in the health sector.

The Pay Review Body (PRB) process is the established mechanism for determining pay uplifts in the public sector. PRBs carefully consider evidence submitted to them from a range of stakeholders, including the Government and trade unions.

The Government is committed to a credible, independent PRB process as the way to set pay for National Health Service staff in England, and there are no plans to replace the process with direct negotiations.

However, we have listened to union concerns about the process, which is why we committed to improving the timeline this year and will look to build on that by remitting the PRBs to begin the next pay round in July, putting us on track to announce pay awards as early as possible in 2026/27.