Medical and dental leaders have joined forces in a bid to restore independence to a ‘broken’ pay review process within the NHS.
The British Dental Association has backed the new British Medical Association report, stating that it represents the joint views of the medical and dental professions.
The report stresses that ministers have interfered in the Review Body for Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) processes as a matter of course.
Bear the scars
They impose public sector pay freezes and pay caps, and ‘arbitrarily define’ NHS ‘affordability’ each year. It argues that this has left both medics and dentists facing the largest falls in real incomes in the UK public sector.
Its publication follows last week’s talks on pay with health secretary Steve Barclay. This came just hours after the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed a real-terms cut for contract values for NHS general dental practice in England.
BDA chair Eddie Crouch said: ‘Both dentists and medics bear the scars of a failed pay review process.
‘Savage cuts to real incomes are the result of a system that’s doled out pay caps and pay freezes to order. The NHS will keep haemorrhaging talent until we see a body with real independence.’
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Dire staffing shortages
Dr Vishal Sharma, chair of the BMA consultants committee, added: ‘This report exposes the supposed independence of the pay review body as a sham designed to provide government with deniability while it directly meddles with pay outcomes.
‘Ministers cannot continue to argue that the DDRB is independent while doctors’ pay falls off a cliff and we have thousands of medical vacancies.
‘If the pay review process is to have any hope in restoring the confidence of doctors and remedying the dire staffing shortages that we face across the NHS, then it must be urgently reformed in line with its founding principles.’
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