Southwest trusts look to pursue NHS pay cuts within national framework
BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f1475 (Published 05 March 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f1475
- Tom Moberly, editor, BMJ Careers
- tmoberly{at}bmj.com
Cuts to pay and conditions for doctors and other NHS staff should be pursued within current national agreements, a group of NHS trusts in the southwest of England has decided.
Since June 2012 a group of 20 NHS trusts and foundation trusts has been looking at the potential to change pay, terms, and conditions of its employees outside national agreements.1 The South West Pay, Terms and Conditions Consortium has been considering how such changes could help the health service deal with the financial challenges it faces. The consortium said that the scale of savings in staff costs that needed to be made across southwest England was equivalent to cutting around 6000 whole time equivalent posts.
Last week the consortium welcomed proposed changes to the national Agenda for Change agreement.2 It has also issued a report identifying “optimiser packages” that set out how it believed that pay, terms, and conditions should be changed to meet the challenges facing the NHS.3
These packages include advanced job planning for consultants, outsourcing of backroom functions, and “very tight management of sickness absence on a daily basis.” The group said that it had made no proposals to implement regional pay and that it believed that the recommended changes it set out should be pursued at a national level.
Chris Bown, chairman of the consortium’s steering group and chief executive of Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said that the group was “fully supportive of the national discussions between employer representatives and unions.”
He said, “The consortium believes that rather than watch these negotiations from a distance, we can and should work in the background as these discussions take place to give us the best opportunity to be sustainable organisations in the years ahead.”
Christina McAnea, head of health at the union Unison, said that the consortium’s proposals signalled “future threats to terms and conditions.”
She added, “This could seriously damage industrial relations and the quality of care for NHS patients in the southwest region.
“We want to make it clear that any rogue employer thinking of going it alone and breaking away from the Agenda for Change agreement should be under no illusions: Unison will fiercely resist this.”