Practices have suffered a double blow in the latest NHS pay awards, GP leaders have warned.

Most NHS staff, including practice nurses and salaried GPs, have been awarded pay increases of 4.5%, deals which their unions say are inadequate. But GP partners have been told to stick to their contractually planned increases in funding, including a 2% allowance for their own pay increases.

The gap between the pay awards and NHS funding was reported to be risking crisis across the NHS. NHS England said yesterday: “Given the requirement to fund this within existing Department of Health budgets, we will need to release money from existing programmes, regrettably impacting on the planned rollout of tech and diagnostic capacity across the health service”.

Dr Farah Jameel, chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “Today’s announcement is a kick in the teeth to both GP partners and salaried GPs in England, who have spent the last two years going above and beyond, against all odds to protect and care for their communities. For GP partners, locked in a five-year pay deal that was agreed pre-pandemic, and now with inflation sky-rocketing, to offer nothing in addition to recognise their intense efforts and transformation of services during Covid-19, nor to pay their staff the recommended uplift, or meet the increased costs of running practices, is a complete insult.”

She added: “With a worldwide shortage of doctors, the NHS faces an uphill struggle to retain the GPs it has when there are better paid jobs overseas. It is time that Ministers woke up to this reality and acted to stop the crisis they want to pretend doesn’t exist from getting any worse.
We cannot afford to lose a single GP from the NHS, and we need to bring back GPs that have left the NHS as quickly as possible. The Government must act urgently to address this exodus if it wishes to prioritise patient safety.”

Richard Murray, chief executive of the King’s Fund, said: “When NHS budgets were last set, they were built on the expectation that most staff would get a 3% pay increase. Today, the government has set that increase at a significantly higher level, but at the same time told NHS leaders that they need to make up the difference from existing budgets. It will inevitably impact the health service’s ability to meet patients’ needs and makes it even harder to see how the NHS will be able to meet government targets to bring down waiting lists. If the government wants the NHS to fund this pay rise out of existing budgets, then government should also be clear with the public that NHS services will be cut as a result.”