After months of protest and four rounds of strike action, NHS consultants could finally be close to reaching a pay deal with the UK government. British Medical Association (BMA) reps will present the offer to their members that will see the pay of an average consultant increase — while the time it takes to reach the top salary range shortens by five years.
‘All of us are planning our exit strategy,’ one consultant admitted — and the data suggests this isn’t hyperbole. Only last year, the BMA warned of a ‘major exodus’ of senior clinicians.
In an offer that has been described as a ‘disguised’ wage rise, consultants will also see their pay structures reformed and modernised. Consultants’ starting salary will increase, and the top level of pay will rise. Some senior doctors will not see additional rises while others may see their salaries go up by just under 13 per cent — but each individual’s pay rise will depend on the stage they’re at in their career. All that’s left now is for union members to decide whether they will accept their new deal in a vote in the coming weeks. If so, it will come into place in January.
The government is keen to say that this isn’t a pay rise. It doesn’t want to present it as an increase to headline pay (which it has said it will not raise past the 6 per cent already been awarded to consultants) but as a series of reforms that will see extra money linked to productivity. The amount of additional money that individual doctors will receive is to vary from zero to just under 13 per cent depending on their stage of career. And while the agreement is set to cost the Treasury hundreds of millions, the government believes this outweighs the cost of further strikes. After the first consultants’ strike in July, over 65,000 appointments and procedures had to be rescheduled and this figure has only grown after their subsequent walk-outs.
Consultants across the country have, over the course of their industrial action, been at pains to point out that their dispute was about more than just pay. The profession has been described as ‘demoralising’ by senior doctors who have campaigned much of their careers for important changes to be made to the workings of the hospital system. It has experienced increased pressures particularly since the pandemic, and more doctors are considering working less as a result.
‘All of us are planning our exit strategy,’ one consultant admitted — and the data suggests this isn’t hyperbole. Over the last decade, the proportion of consultant doctors opting to work ‘less than full time’ has increased by almost five per cent, to a fifth of all consultant doctors. Only last year, the BMA warned of a ‘major exodus’ of senior clinicians after a survey of 8,000 consultants found that over half of consultant surgeons planned to leave the NHS in the following 12 months.
Frustrations with working conditions and current pension plans have played an important role in causing widespread dissatisfaction among senior medics. Other parts of the deal address these wider issues, with planned reforms to the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration Body (DDRB) which the BMA says has ‘been eroded by successive governments’ for too long — as well as improving shared parental leave arrangements for senior doctors. While positive about finally reaching an offer, the chair of the BMA consultants committee Dr Vishal Sharma called it ‘a huge shame’ that it has taken so long to reach an agreement with the government ‘when we called for talks many months ago’.
Negotiations began while Steve Barclay was health secretary and has been signed off by Victoria Atkins, newly in charge of the health portfolio. She’s described the offer as ‘fair and reasonable’ and says that it will ‘directly address gender pay issues in the NHS’. Rishi Sunak reiterated it is ‘a fair deal’ for both consultants and taxpayers. Now consultants across the country will be asked whether they believe the same – in a vote that could finally end the strikes.
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