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Health secretary accepts 1% doctor pay increase recommendation

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has accepted a recommendation that doctor pay should increase by 1% in 2017/18.

This mirrors the GP partner contractual pay uplifts already announced in England, in Wales, and in Scotland.

In a ministerial statement, Mr Hunt said he accepted the recommendation, set out in the annual report by the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration, for salaried and independent contractor doctors to receive a 1% pay uplift.

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He also accepted that there should be a 1% increase to the maximum and minimum of the salary range for salaried GPs; to the GP trainers’ grant; and the flexible pay premia included in the new junior doctors’ contract.

The supplement payable to GP registrars ’should remain at 45% of basic salary for those on the existing UK-wide contract’ and the rate for GP appraisers ‘should remain at £500’, in line with DDRB recommendations, MR Hunt’s statement added.

With regards to the specific remits given to DDRB to consider targeting pay awards by specialty and geography to relieve workforce shortages, Mr Hunt said the Government ‘notes the recommendation for giving further considerations’ to the proposal.

The DDRB’s report recommended that the health departments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland all ‘give serious consideration to developing a new mechanism for enabling targeted pay solutions, backed by extra national resources, to be locally stimulated and rapidly tested’.