To ask the Minister of Health what financial support for costs related to increased employer National Insurance contributions is being provided by his Department for those community and voluntary and social enterprise organisations delivering services to address his priorities.

My recent announcement on 13 May outlined funding being made available to help support non-statutory providers of health and social care to meet their additional National Insurance bills. This package provides a projected £40m covering areas such as social care providers and hospices as well as family health service providers (GPs, dentists, community pharmacies and opticians).

Within this package, some projected £2.1m of funding has been made available to support Community and Voluntary organisations with these additional costs. A significant element of this funding relates to contracts held between HSC Trusts and individual Community and Voluntary organisations and the application of funding will be based on these local contractual arrangements.

My announcement sets out that the provision of this funding is not without a financial hit to my Department, but I have taken this action rather than leave our health and social care partners to deal with the financial pressure of increases to Employer National Insurance contributions by themselves.

This is in line with my three year plan for Health and Social Care which includes stabilisation of services amid the current severe financial pressures.