BMJ 2013;347:f7606 doi: 10.1136/bmj.f7606 (Published 18 December 2013)
Page 1 of 1
News
NEWS Thousands of NHS staff made redundant have been rehired despite large payoffs Adrian O’Dowd London
Thousands of managers and administration staff have been rehired despite being made redundant under the reorganisation of the NHS in England and receiving large financial settlements, it was revealed today. MPs on the parliamentary health select committee said during an evidence session on 17 December about public spending on health and social care that they had received information about the scale of staff payoffs and rehirings.
Barbara Keeley, Labour MP for Worsley and Eccles South, said that 19 126 staff members had been made redundant as a result of the reorganisation and that of these 3261 had been rehired. Of the people brought back, 2534 had come back within a year of losing their original job, and 403 had returned within 28 days of being made redundant. Some redundancy agreements had involved six figure sums. Keeley said, “This is the use of public money: payoffs and redundancies, of people taking pensions from the public purse and then being re-employed in another capacity and being paid [for] consultancy. Effectively, what we are seeing is people being paid twice from the same purse. This just smacks of appallingly bad planning . . . and carelessness with public money.”
David Nicholson, chief executive of NHS England, giving evidence, said that the NHS had spent only around £600m (€715m; $980m) to £700m on redundancies, much less than the original forecast of £1.5bn.
At the time, he said, he had written to strategic health authorities and asked them not to rehire people or have them work as a consultant for at least six months, but he added, “I had no legal basis on which to do that and no power to make it happen, but I just asked them that they wouldn’t do that.” The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, also giving evidence, said, “The NHS is 1.7 million people strong, and successive governments—not just this government—have concluded that it doesn’t work to run it as a single structure with everyone reporting to the secretary of state.”
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However, the government had changed the rules so that in situations where national arm’s length bodies were re-employing someone who had been working for another arm’s length body, if that person was re-employed within a year they had to pay back their redundancy on a pro rata basis. This new policy, however, was not retrospective and did not apply to the people mentioned by Keeley.
MPs asked about the government’s plans for next year’s pay deal for NHS staff and whether it intended to continue its policy of pay restraint. Hunt said that although the health department wanted to recommend a 1% pay rise for all staff next year, it could not afford to do so unless there was agreement on reducing the automatic pay increments that some staff members were due to get, which could mean some people getting a 6% or 7% rise collectively. The pay review bodies have not yet announced a final pay award.
Hunt said, “I dearly want to give NHS employees the 1% rise that we want to give across the public sector, and if money was no object I’d like to give them more, because they are working hard under extremely challenging circumstances, but budgetary constraints exist.” A flat 1% rise for all staff would be unaffordable because it would equate to funding for an extra 10 000 frontline posts, he added.
Asked whether there was too much reliance on pay restraint to meet expected efficiency savings in the NHS, Hunt said, “We recognise that the pay freeze that we started this parliament with is not sustainable, and that’s why we’ve moved to 1%. We also recognise that that means we have to be even more imaginative in finding other ways to make efficiency savings, because we can’t constantly rely on the kind of pay restraint that we have had to date.” Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f7606 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2013
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Page 1 of 1
News
NEWS Thousands of NHS staff made redundant have been rehired despite large payoffs Adrian O’Dowd London
Thousands of managers and administration staff have been rehired despite being made redundant under the reorganisation of the NHS in England and receiving large financial settlements, it was revealed today. MPs on the parliamentary health select committee said during an evidence session on 17 December about public spending on health and social care that they had received information about the scale of staff payoffs and rehirings.
Barbara Keeley, Labour MP for Worsley and Eccles South, said that 19 126 staff members had been made redundant as a result of the reorganisation and that of these 3261 had been rehired. Of the people brought back, 2534 had come back within a year of losing their original job, and 403 had returned within 28 days of being made redundant. Some redundancy agreements had involved six figure sums. Keeley said, “This is the use of public money: payoffs and redundancies, of people taking pensions from the public purse and then being re-employed in another capacity and being paid [for] consultancy. Effectively, what we are seeing is people being paid twice from the same purse. This just smacks of appallingly bad planning . . . and carelessness with public money.”
David Nicholson, chief executive of NHS England, giving evidence, said that the NHS had spent only around £600m (€715m; $980m) to £700m on redundancies, much less than the original forecast of £1.5bn.
At the time, he said, he had written to strategic health authorities and asked them not to rehire people or have them work as a consultant for at least six months, but he added, “I had no legal basis on which to do that and no power to make it happen, but I just asked them that they wouldn’t do that.” The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, also giving evidence, said, “The NHS is 1.7 million people strong, and successive governments—not just this government—have concluded that it doesn’t work to run it as a single structure with everyone reporting to the secretary of state.”
For personal use only: See rights and reprints http://www.bmj.com/permissions
However, the government had changed the rules so that in situations where national arm’s length bodies were re-employing someone who had been working for another arm’s length body, if that person was re-employed within a year they had to pay back their redundancy on a pro rata basis. This new policy, however, was not retrospective and did not apply to the people mentioned by Keeley.
MPs asked about the government’s plans for next year’s pay deal for NHS staff and whether it intended to continue its policy of pay restraint. Hunt said that although the health department wanted to recommend a 1% pay rise for all staff next year, it could not afford to do so unless there was agreement on reducing the automatic pay increments that some staff members were due to get, which could mean some people getting a 6% or 7% rise collectively. The pay review bodies have not yet announced a final pay award.
Hunt said, “I dearly want to give NHS employees the 1% rise that we want to give across the public sector, and if money was no object I’d like to give them more, because they are working hard under extremely challenging circumstances, but budgetary constraints exist.” A flat 1% rise for all staff would be unaffordable because it would equate to funding for an extra 10 000 frontline posts, he added.
Asked whether there was too much reliance on pay restraint to meet expected efficiency savings in the NHS, Hunt said, “We recognise that the pay freeze that we started this parliament with is not sustainable, and that’s why we’ve moved to 1%. We also recognise that that means we have to be even more imaginative in finding other ways to make efficiency savings, because we can’t constantly rely on the kind of pay restraint that we have had to date.” Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f7606 © BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2013
Subscribe: http://www.bmj.com/subscribe
