The Government has set aside funding to offer GPs a maximum 2.8% pay rise for 2025/26, its submission to the independent pay review body has revealed.
In its evidence published earlier this week, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it believed this was a ‘reasonable amount to have set aside’ for the next financial year, based on economic forecasts and ‘taking into account’ the fiscal context.
The Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) is currently taking evidence ahead of its recommendation, but the timing of DHSC’s report suggests it will come earlier than in recent years, as health secretary Wes Streeting has instructed.
According to the DHSC’s submission document, arrangements for the 2025/26 GP contract are currently ‘subject to consultation’ with the BMA’s GP Committee, with final details to be published in spring 2025.
In a section on affordability for 2025/26, the Government’s evidence to the DDRB said: ‘The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has set aside 2.8% for pay for both [NHS Pay Review Body] and DDRB remit groups.
‘DHSC view this as a reasonable amount to have set aside based on the macroeconomic data and forecasts and taking into account the fiscal and labour market context.’
It also suggested that if the DDRB recommendation is above 2.8%, the Government is unlikely to accept that.
‘Accepting recommendations above what is budgeted for would mean stark trade-offs against activity and wider budgets or consideration to whether productivity improvements can unlock further funding,’ DHSC said.
The report recognised that the Government had made ‘difficult decisions’ in the recent Autumn Budget, including ‘increasing the rate of employer NICs to fund public services’.
However, it said: ‘Detail on how the Autumn Budget 2024 will impact on general practice finances was yet to be fully established at the time of writing our evidence.’
Meanwhile, NHS England’s evidence submitted to the DDRB, published at the same time, said that making an unaffordable pay recommendation for GPs will ‘significantly’ impact patient care and make the job ‘even harder’. It has also proposed a 2.8% pay settlement.
Its submission said that NHS staff ‘work incredibly hard’ and that it wants to see them ‘fairly rewarded’, in a way that ‘strikes the right balance’ on resources so that they have the ability to deliver the care they want for patients.
It also said warned that pay remains the largest component of NHS costs – around 65% of total operating costs – and that pay inflation ‘represents a material cost pressure’ that the NHS ‘needs to plan for and manage’.
NHS England set out that: ‘Our view on affordability considers the likely NHS budget from discussions to date with DHSC and what was set out by HM Treasury in the Autumn Budget 2024.
‘Based on this, we propose to set allocations for NHS planning on the basis of a 2.8% pay settlement. Every 0.5% increase above that costs around £700m, which is the equivalent to around 2% of elective activity (greater than 300,00 completed patient pathways).’
It added: ‘We have already made significant prioritisation decisions. Pay awards above what has already been allocated will require further tough re-prioritisation of the decisions already made, significantly impacting patient care and in turn making the day-to-day job of NHS staff even harder.’
The BMA said the belief by the Government that a 2.8% rise is enough ‘indicates a poor grasp of the unresolved issues from two years of industrial action’.
BMA’s chair of council, Professor Philip Banfield, said: ‘It is far below the current rate of inflation experienced by doctors in their daily lives and does not move significantly closer to restoring the relative value of doctors’ pay lost over the past 15 years’.
He added that the ‘sub-inflationary’ proposal from the Government ‘serves as test to the DDRB.’
‘The BMA expects it to take this opportunity to show it is now truly independent, to take an objective view of the evidence it receives from all parties – not just the Government – and to make an offer that reflects the value of doctors’ skills and expertise in a global market, and that moves them visibly further along the path to full pay restoration.’
Tony Brown, a former practice manager and now chief operating officer at North Shields PCN Collaboration, said it’s ‘inconceivable that a newly elected Government, so full of promises for the future of healthcare provision and consistently saying it will “fix a broken NHS” is offering GPs such a derisory increase’.
‘The NHS isn’t broken, it’s underfunded and politicians are throwing patients to the wolves’, he warned.
In July this year, the DDRB recommended a 6% pay rise for all UK GPs, which included partners for the first time in five years, and the Government accepted this recommendation in full.
Parts of this article were first published by our sister title Pulse
