AGENDA FOR CHANGE

Modernising The NHS Pay System

Summary

This is the third joint statement of progress on behalf of the four Health Departments, the NHS Confederation, and all the unions and staff organisations recognised for negotiating purposes by the NHS, following publication of the White Paper Agenda for Change – Modernising the NHS Pay System. The four Health Departments, employers and staff organisations remain fully committed to modernising the pay system across the NHS and – in Northern Ireland – Health and Personal Social Services, to support a modern NHS and workforce and to do so using the principles of social partnership. Considerable progress has been made this year, particularly in developing the job evaluation scheme which will underpin the new pay structure.

In view of the scale of investment required for pay reform, the Government has decided to leave final decisions on funding and implementation until after the 2002 Spending Review is announced. These decisions will be informed by an assessment of economic prospects which is not yet available. However to enable progress to be maintained, all parties have agreed that the job evaluation scheme and models of a new pay structure should continue to be developed. The aim will be to complete this work as early as possible next year so that a final agreement can be reached as soon as information on spending plans is available, with a view to beginning the process of implementation at the earliest possible opportunity.

Proposals for modernising pay and conditions of service were published in February 1999. Talks began a few months later leading to the first Joint Statement in October 1999. This established the commitment of both sides to enter into detailed negotiations on a new pay system through a Central Negotiating Group. It also set out some jointly agreed principles to guide and inform the negotiating process.

A second joint statement was made in November 2000 which reported progress on a number of the pay modernisation proposals. It noted that there was still much detail to work out, particularly to ensure that the proposed job evaluation scheme was sufficiently robust to underpin the new pay system.

Considerable progress has been made since the last joint statement. In particular the job evaluation scheme has been developed further so that it is now generating credible and consistent results over the range of jobs covered by the UK wide NHS including a number of social services jobs in Northern Ireland. It has now been used to carry out benchmark evaluations on around 400 examples of the most common NHS jobs. This work provides the basic data needed to negotiate. The Central Negotiating Group have also prepared a set of negotiating documents which set out the proposals on all areas of the new pay system, with remaining differences highlighted.

Until a final decision can be made and in order to ensure progress is maintained, all parties have agreed that the job evaluation scheme and models of a new pay structure should continue to be developed. The aim will be to complete this work as early as possible next year to enable swift agreement with a view to starting implementation at the earliest possible opportunity.

All the parties to the talks agree that modernising the NHS pay system remains important not only to ensure staff are rewarded fairly for the work they do, but to help deliver fast modern services for patients. To this end we have agreed that we will build on the partnership approach already established in the national negotiations and extend this to implementation of pay reform, assuming agreement can be reached on the new pay system. Under this approach, all sides will work together to achieve the intended benefits of pay modernisation both for patients and for staff.

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