The BMA has released a critical report detailing ‘a litany of instances of meddling and interference’ by the Government into the doctors’ pay review body.
In its report, it said the NHS staffing crisis cannot be resolved without wholesale reform of the doctors’ and dentists’ pay review body (DDRB) .
GP practice income is no longer subject to recommendations by the DDRB, but salaried GPs’ pay is.
The BMA report points out how ‘rather than treating it as independent, the Government has interfered with every step of the pay review process’ for over a decade.
One of the most ‘outrageous acts of interference’, the BMA said, has been the Government’s remit letters to the pay review body.
The BMA report finds these have been used to impose pay freezes and caps, and to constrain the DDRB’s recommendations so that they fall within the Government’s ‘affordability targets’.
The report argues this is not legitimate grounds to restrict an independent pay review body, whose purpose should be to ensure that pay awards recognise the need to motivate, recruit and retain staff and ensure their pay keeps track with the cost of living.
The BMA concluded that unless the pay review process is reformed there will be growing discontent and ‘a worsening of the already-dangerous workforce shortages’ that the NHS faces, as staff become more and more ‘disillusioned about the fairness of their pay awards.’
Dr Vishal Sharma, chair of the BMA consultants committee, said: ‘This report exposes the supposed independence of the pay review body as a sham designed to provide government with deniability whilst it directly meddles with pay outcomes.
‘Simply going back to the DDRB to ask for another recommendation on pay will not solve anything. For more than a decade the pay review process has been constantly interfered with by the Government, resulting in year after year of pay cuts for doctors.
‘Ministers cannot continue to argue that the DDRB is independent while doctors’ pay falls off a cliff and we have thousands of medical vacancies.
‘If the pay review process is to have any hope in restoring the confidence of doctors and remedying the dire staffing shortages that we face across the NHS then it must be urgently reformed in line with its founding principles.’
The report and its calls for reform are fully endorsed by the British Dental Association and represents the joint views of the medical and dental professions.
Eddie Crouch, BDA’s chair, said: ‘Both dentists and medics bear the scars of a failed pay review process.
‘Savage cuts to real incomes are the result of a system that’s doled out pay caps and pay freezes to order.
‘The NHS will keep haemorrhaging talent until we see a body with real independence.’
About bloody time should have been said a decade ago.No Faith in public sector pay review bodies.They all should be scrapped.
Govt: “You can award anything you like, as long as it is under 5.1%”
DDRB: “5%?”
Govt: “Good idea. Let’s run with that…we really like this independent process.”