News / Government hints at pay policy review

There was confusion over NHS pay policy after indications by cabinet ministers, including health secretary Jeremy Hunt, that the government was about to relax the 1% pay cap. These were later played down.

Speaking at the NHS Confederation conference in mid-June, Mr Hunt said he had a ‘great deal of sympathy’ for the case made by nurses and others to scrap the overall ceiling. The cap has been in place since 2013 and, in England, is currently set to continue until the end of the 2019/20 financial year.

He said the NHS had to live within its budget and that public pay policy was a matter for the chancellor, Philip Hammond. 

However, the health secretary will meet nurses’ leaders shortly and will report their views to Mr Hammond before a decision is taken about pay.

As the month closed, Labour tabled an amendment to the Queen’s Speech, calling for an immediate end to the cap. While this was defeated, two cabinet ministers suggested the cap would be reviewed, while Downing Street reportedly suggested an announcement could be made in the autumn Budget. 

During the debate on the Queen’s Speech, Mr Hunt suggested the government would wait until the pay review bodies had made their recommendations.  

Also attending the conference, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens (above) revealed that the commissioning sector delivered an underspend of £903m in 2016/17. He urged the NHS to repeat the hard work of the past 12 months and take part in RightCare and the model hospital initiatives.

‘If we don’t get the financial balance in the system, that’s going to crowd out our ability to do so much of what we want. And it’s also going to undermine our argument that we are effective stewards of further funding for the NHS,’ said Mr Stevens.

NHS Improvement chief executive Jim Mackey told the conference that in 2017/18 more detail on the next steps for the forward view would be published and there would be ‘a big push on operational productivity’.

While NHS Improvement would not loosen its grip on financial control, quality improvement would come more to the fore in its work, he added.