The original article can be found in: BMJ Careers By Caroline White
Doctors will receive a 1% increase in base pay across the board in 2013-14 in line with the recommendations of the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body on Remuneration (DDRB), the Treasury has announced.
All salaried doctors and dentists will receive a pay uplift of 1%, whereas contractor GPs on the general medical services (GMS) contract will receive a gross uplift of 1.32% to cover a 1% increase in GP pay and increases in practice expenses.
Doctors’ leaders have said that the uplift will do little to boost flagging morale or adequately reward doctors’ efforts to make extensive efficiency savings while improving quality of services.
The pay increase, which comes after a two year pay freeze, is in line with the chancellor of the exchequer’s 2011 autumn statement on the expected levels of public sector pay proposed for the next two years.[1]
The Treasury said in a statement, “The public sector pay bill makes up over half of departmental resource spending, so managing public sector pay continues to be central to the government’s plans for fiscal consolidation and will help to protect jobs and services.”
But Mark Porter, chairman of council of the BMA, said that doctors had worked hard to boost the performance of the NHS at a time of huge financial pressure. “The net increase of 1%, which is below inflation, will be very disappointing to doctors—especially after real terms pay cuts for many years—and will do little to improve morale,” he said.
In its report the DDRB said that the Department of Health had encouraged it to recommend no pay rise for doctors and that it was also mindful of the financial pressures facing employers. But it believed that a “zero uplift” could be demotivating.
“We believe that there is a need to maintain the motivation of doctors (and dentists) to address quality and care issues and help bring about the many proposed changes in the NHS,” it said.The DDRB had also recommended that GPs on the GMS contract be given an uplift of 2.29% to take account of increased staff pay and practice expenses and to allow GP contractors a 1% pay increase.
In a written statement issued on 14 March the health secretary for England, Jeremy Hunt, said that he accepted the 1% increase for GPs but not the recommended allowances for practice staff costs so instead decided on a contract uplift of 1.32%.
NHS Employers’ chief executive, Dean Royles, welcomed the move, which he said would ensure that increases in the take home pay of practice staff were consistent with increases that other staff within the NHS will receive.
But Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee, said that the committee was “bitterly disappointed” by the government’s interference in the DDRB’s recommendations.
“The government is essentially telling GPs that their staff should earn less than what the DDRB has indicated or that GPs should take another real terms pay cut,” he said.
“GPs will be fed up that they are again being treated unfairly, particularly when they are also facing the imposition of unwelcome contract changes and having to deal with the consequences of the Health and Social Care Act in England,” he added.
- Download the full DDRB report at www.ome.uk.com/Review_Bodies.aspx.
