GPs in Northern Ireland will not receive the full pay uplift recommended by the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB), the BMA has been told.
Meanwhile, GPs in Scotland recently received confirmation that the total uplift to core global sum funding will be 7.5%, backdated to April 2024, to cover the DDRB recommendation of a 6% pay increase.
In July, the DDRB recommended the uplift for doctors in all four nations but it is for each devolved Government to decide whether to accept it.
BMA Northern Ireland met with health minister Mike Nesbitt last week to discuss the uplift, but was told that the NI Government is ‘not in a position to make the full pay award’.
BMA NI Council chair Dr Alan Stout, a GP in Belfast, said he made it clear to the Government that this is ‘totally unacceptable’.
He described ‘the scale of anger and outrage’ from GPs as ‘unprecedented.
‘I will now meet with the chairs of all the BMA branch of committees in Northern Ireland to seek their views on how to proceed.
‘Doctors here are totally disillusioned with the Department of Health and its attitude towards doctors’ pay.
‘They seem to believe that by paying us less than counterparts in the rest of the UK, it will somehow motivate us to work harder to address the chaos our health system is in. Without staff, our health service cannot function,’ said Dr Stout.
He added that it is time ‘to stop this cycle’ of doctors in Northern Ireland ‘constantly playing catch-up’ with the rest of the UK on pay.
Dr Stout said: ‘Pay awards need to be built into the financial planning the Department undertakes, so they are not constantly caught by surprise at the notion staff will get a pay rise.
‘Over the summer, consultants agreed a new contract with the Department. Resident doctors are currently in negotiations, as are SAS doctors.
‘All of these talks were entered into with the belief that DDRB would be paid as recommended.’
He said the news that the fully backdated DDRB uplift for this year may not be forthcoming undermined that work and created ‘a total lack of trust that the Department will uphold any contract that is negotiated and agreed’.
Last month, BMA GPC Scotland received confirmation that the total uplift to core global sum funding is 7.5%, and will be in two parts:
- The main uplift of 6.5% to the Global Sum for pay, staff, and other expenses that is intended to be enough to meet increasing practice expenses over the last twelve months, to deliver a 5.5% pay uplift for practice employed staff, 6% for other (non-staff) expenses, and to leave enough left over for a 6% increase to GP earnings in line with the DDRB’s recommendation.
- And a 1% uplift to the Global Sum for the growing number of registered patients.
GPC Scotland said that whether the core funding uplift covers the DDRB recommendation or not will ‘depend on each practice’s individual business model’ and the costs they have faced in the last year.
It said: ‘Unlike in each of the last two years, this year’s uplift may be sufficient to deliver on the DDRB’s recommended GP pay increase, which is above the rate of CPI inflation and is therefore a real terms increase on last year.
‘However, what it will not do is restore the funding lost to general practice in each of the last two years which we pressed both the DDRB and Scottish Government to do.’
In September, the Welsh Government accepted recommendations from DDRB on GP pay in full, following several delays.
In England, the Government agreed to increase the global sum by a total of 7.4% for 2024/25 in order to fund the DDRB uplift.
A version of this story first appeared on our sister title Pulse.
