After consultants secure a pay rise of up to 13%, nurses are considering strike action after they were only offered a 5% rise.
NHS strikes
Strikes by NHS staff have caused more than one million treatments and appointments to be cancelled, and cost the health service £1bn in premium payments and planning and preparation. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has blamed them for the failure so far to bring down England’s hospital waiting list, which is currently at a record high of 7.8 million.
A deal for consultants
Consultants are some of the highest paid NHS staff with a starting salary of just under £94,000 rising to more than £126,000. They went on strike alongside junior doctors this year after being awarded a 6% rise. The new deal sets aside another 4.95% in the pay budget, but the total rise an individual consultant will get will vary from zero to nearly 12.8% for the majority as part of an overhaul of their contracts.
The offer comes after consultants in England have taken part in nine days of strikes in their dispute over pay. The last was in early October. The BMA had argued that since 2008, pay levels had fallen significantly once inflation was taken into account.
The offer will now be put to British Medical Association (BMA) members, as well as those who are part of the much smaller Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) union. If the deal is agreed, strikes by top hospital doctors in England will end, although talks between the Government and specialist, associate specialist and specialty doctors (SAS) and junior doctors are ongoing.
The consultants’ deal will put pressure on junior doctors to bring their industrial action action to an end and agree a deal. They have been demanding a 35.3 per cent pay rise, a much higher figure than consultants had called for. However nurses, who had only been offered a 5% rise this year after months of strikes, said they were “appalled” at the consultants’ deal.
Responses
Rishi Sunak said: “Ending damaging strike action in the NHS is vitally important if we want to continue making progress towards cutting waiting lists while making sure patients get the care they deserve. This is a fair deal for consultants who will benefit from major reform to their contract, it is fair for taxpayers because it will not risk our ongoing work to tackle inflation, and most importantly it is a good deal for patients to see the end of consultant industrial action.”
Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s Chief Nurse, said: “The Government has shown it has the political will to reform pay for some of the highest earners in the NHS – while our members are left with the lowest pay rise in the public sector. Nursing staff work closely with consultants, and we too have campaigned for years to have quicker progression through the pay scale. This would help recognise nurses’ safety-critical and life-saving skills, and yet many spend most of their career stuck on the same NHS pay band”.
“It’s galling that almost 12 months since nursing staff took the unprecedented decision to strike, our pay dispute remains unresolved, and the Government continues to undervalue our profession. Today’s news will ignite our members’ fury further, making nursing strikes more likely in the future” Ranger continued.
Curia’s NHS Innovation and Life Sciences Commission
Jointly chaired by former Life Sciences and Innovation Minister, Lord James O’Shaughnessy and former Deputy Medical Director at NHS England Professor Mike Bewick, the Commission seeks to identify examples of good practice in innovation, draw learning and consider how implementation plans across the sector can improve the lives of patients. By bringing together key strands of policy and developing effective implementation strategies through extensive research, the Commission seeks to see change at every level within the NHS.
