Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government why they instructed a reduction of integrated care board staff by April 2026 without making additional up-front funding provision for redundancy payments.

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we have been clear on the need for a smaller centre, as well as scaling back integrated care board running costs and National Health Service provider corporate costs, in order to reduce waste and bureaucracy.

We have recently announced the Spending Review settlement which provides an additional £29 billion of annual day-to-day spending in real terms by 2028/29 compared to 2023/24. We are now carefully reviewing how the settlement is prioritised, including making provision for redundancy costs. In due course, the NHS will be asked to incorporate this into the multi-year planning round which has now been launched with the publication of the Medium-Term Planning Framework on 24 October 2025.