Correspondence

Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration remit letter: 2023 to 2024 pay round

Published 16 November 2022

Applies to England

Mr Christopher Pilgrim
Chair, Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration
Office of Manpower Economics
Level 3, Windsor House
50 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0TL

Dear Mr Pilgrim,

I would firstly like to offer my thanks for the Review Body for Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration’s (DDRB’s) work over the past year on the 2022 report. The government appreciates the independent, expert advice and valuable contribution that the DDRB makes.

I write to you now to formally commence the 2023 to 2024 pay round.

As described during last year’s pay round, the NHS budget has already been set until 2024 to 2025. Pay awards must strike a careful balance – recognising the vital importance of public sector workers while delivering value for the taxpayer, considering private sector pay levels, not increasing the country’s debt further, and being careful not to drive prices even higher in the future.

In the current economic context, it is particularly important that you also have regard to the government’s inflation target when forming recommendations.

The evidence that my department, HM Treasury and NHS England will provide in the coming months will support you in your consideration of these factors, for example via the provision of details on recruitment and retention.

We invite you to make recommendations on an annual pay award for all doctors and dentists not in multi-year deals.

This includes consultants, junior doctors, specialty doctors and associate specialists (SAS) doctors not on new 2021 contracts, salaried general medical practitioners, and the pay element of remuneration for dentists employed by, or providing services to, the NHS.

For SAS, you will be aware of the multi-year pay and contract reform deal agreed with the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2020. In making your recommendations for SAS doctors who have not transferred to the new contract, we ask that you give very careful consideration to the impact any such recommendations might have on the integrity of the agreed reforms to the contract and on the delivery of their intended benefits.

Independent contractor general medical practitioners remain subject to a 5-year pay agreement between NHS England and the BMA and, therefore, the government is not seeking recommendations for this group.

We do, however, invite you to make recommendations on uplifts to the maximum and minimum of the salaried general medical practitioner pay scales. As ever, recommendations will need to be informed by affordability and the fixed contract resources available to practices under the 5-year GP contract.

As always, while your remit covers the whole of the United Kingdom, it is for each administration to make its own decisions on its approach to this year’s pay round and to communicate this to you directly.

It is important that we make progress towards bringing the timetable of the pay review body round back to normal. We are hoping to expediate the process as much as possible this year and would welcome your report in April 2023, subject to ongoing conversations with the Office of Manpower Economics.

I would like to thank you again for your and the review body’s invaluable contribution to the pay round, and look forward to receiving your 2023 report in due course.

Yours ever,

Steve Barclay, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care