Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with Integrated Care Boards on the potential impact of the outsourcing of soft facilities management staff at hospitals on (a) staff pensions, (b) sick pay and (c) annual leave.

Contract award decisions in the National Health Service which may involve the transfer of staff delivering “soft” facilities management services to other suppliers fall directly to individual NHS bodies, who are responsible for running their own procurement exercises. Ministers at the Department do not have general powers in legislation to direct trusts in relation to the exercise of any of their functions, including in relation to specific contractual decisions.

The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) allow for terms and conditions of service to be protected or frozen as they stand on the date of transfer to a new employer. This includes annual leave entitlement and sick pay. Under the Fair Deal for Staff Pensions policy, employees who are members of the NHS Pension Scheme can retain access to their existing pension arrangements, or be offered a comparable scheme by the new employer. The Government expects that any outsourced services are delivered by trusts in a way that improves quality, ensures greater stability and longer-term investment in the workforce, and delivers better value for money, as part of the broader commitments on procurement, as set out in the Make Work Pay programme, with further information available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/make-work-pay

NHS staff continue to work incredibly hard on delivering the best possible care for patients, and wherever they work across the health service, we expect the highest standards and good terms and conditions.