NHS consultant doctors in Scotland offered 10.5% pay rise

Doctors’ leaders say a pay deal offered by the Scottish Government is a “positive first step” towards making consultants’ wages in NHS Scotland competitive again.

After what the British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland described as “intense negotiations”, the Government is putting forward a £124.9m package which, if accepted, will see basic pay for doctors rise 10.5%.

Additional investment of £5.7m means the offer is the equivalent of an 11% rise, BMA Scotland said.

It is now putting the offer to its members with a recommendation to accept it.

It comes after the three main unions representing nursing, midwifery and other NHS staff confirmed they will accept a 5.5% pay rise.

Health secretary Neil Gray said the pay offer for doctors comes after “weeks of constructive engagement with BMA Scotland”, as he added the deal will “ensure that our consultant workforce feel valued, supported and fairly rewarded”.

He added: “This will bring Scotland back into line with recent pay deals in other parts of the UK, ensuring our NHS remains competitive when recruiting and retaining consultants.

“I wish to thank our consultants for their dedication and patience. They are a critical part of NHS Scotland’s workforce and we are committed to supporting them.

“BMA will now put this to their members and I hope the unions will accept our offer.”

Dr Alan Robertson, chairman of the BMA’s Scottish consultant committee, said that since the financial crisis of 2008, consultants in Scotland had suffered “considerable pay erosion due to repeated pay freezes and pay caps at a time when inflation has generally run much higher than pay awards received”.

He added that when pay deals in the rest of the UK were taken into consideration, “it was increasingly clear that consultants in Scotland were falling seriously behind”.

As a result, he said the NHS in Scotland had “risked losing a significant proportion of this vital part of the workforce to places prepared to value them better”.

The new pay deal, arrived at after “considerable work” in negotiations with the Government, is “a positive first step towards making the Scottish NHS a competitive place for consultants to work once again”, Dr Robertson added.

He said: “While comparisons can be difficult due to slightly different pay structures, at the very least this is an offer which returns consultant pay in Scotland to being comparable with that across the UK – and at many stages of a consultant’s career it will be better than in England.”

It comes as official figures show 7.1% of consultant posts in NHS Scotland are vacant – but Dr Robertson said requests under freedom of information laws have shown these “don’t count long-term vacancies”.

He claimed the true vacancy rate is “roughly double that, meaning hundreds of posts lying empty, making any attempt to tackle ever-lengthening waiting lists futile”.

Dr Robertson said: “That’s why this investment in the consultant workforce could not come soon enough.

“There is still much work to be done given the many years that our pay has been eroded and the impact of higher taxation in Scotland.

“However the offer is one we believe moves consultant pay in Scotland in the right direction and can be built upon.”

BMA Scotland expects to open a ballot in October for members to vote on the pay deal, with the results likely in early November.