The year started with a round of industrial action across the NHS, with doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals walking out in ongoing disputes over pay.
The Government announced in July that NHS staff in England would get a 6% pay increase in an unsuccessful bid to stop the strikes. The BMA rejected the meagre offer, pointing out that it fell well short of restoring doctors’ pay to what it had been in 2008-2009.
GP partners were not even offered this much, bound as they were to a five-year deal agreed in 2019, giving them a 2.1% rise annually – well below inflation. But they were still expected to give staff a 6% pay rise.
No additional funding was to be made available by the Treasury to the DHSC, which would have to cover the pay rise from its existing coffers by reassessing its priorities.
However, GP practices would get more money backdated to the start of the financial year, from which it should divvy out the uplift to all salaried practice staff, not just GPs. There was no indication whether that additional funding would be a one-off, or whether practices will receive the extra for pay rises on a recurring basis.
Six weeks after the 6% salary increase was announced, the money hadn’t been paid out.
While practice employees were reaching out their hands ready to receive their extra pay, GPs were having to tell them their pay rise would have to wait.
DHSC and NHSE were still scratching around trying to decide how to meet the extra funding for practices, which will vary depending on how each practice’s workforce is made up.
‘No one has actually thought about how you do it… [and] it’s now taking ages to get sorted out,’ said AISMA board member Andy Pow. ‘Every practice will be different… there are going to be winners and losers in all of that.’
With regards to the striking health care professionals, the Prime Minister urged unions to ‘call off their strikes’ and accept the deal the Government had put on the table, stating that it was the ‘final’ offer and there would be no more negotiating.
GPs are not immune to such a volatile environment. Early signs indicated that there was appetite for striking in general practice, with nearly one-third (31%) of partners responding to a Pulse survey saying they’d consider pulling back routine services for a week if funding for the next two years wasn’t significantly increased.
And just last month, England LMCs voted for GPs to ballot on industrial action, pending the outcome of contract negotiations. Rallying the troops, GPC chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer pointed out that the profession’s bargaining power could be increased if GPs were willing to take the ‘once-in-a-generation’ step of action.
It is yet to be seen whether GPs will follow their junior doctor (and potentially, consultant) colleagues and walk out. What is clear is that the saga of the NHS strikes is far from over.
