Top-paid doctor on £740,000 as females trail in earning power

THE highest-paid doctor in the NHS is earning £740,000 a year, according to new figures showing a £14,000 pay gap between male and female consultants.

The statistics reveal just five out of the 100 top-earning NHS consultants in England are female, despite women making up a third of the total workforce. And six times as many men as women were paid the highest bonuses, worth more than £77,000 each.

Best paid of all was a male doctor who earned almost £740,000 in 20162017, according to the figures obtained by the BBC. The figure is two-and-ahalf times the earnings of the highest paid woman.

Male consultants working full-time earned an average of £127,683, including bonuses – 12 per cent more than female consultants, who received an average of £113,874. The pay gap shrank to £1,500 when overtime and bonuses were stripped out.

The Daily Telegraph last year revealed that four times as many bonuses were being paid to male consultants as were paid to women.

In the NHS, basic pay for consultants is topped up by a system of merit awards, which can be worth as much as the basic salary.

It means a consultant earning the maximum £103,000 NHS salary could be paid up to £77,000 more in annual bonuses, plus any income from private work.

Overall, 22,874 of 43,856 consultants in England – more than half – received some kind of bonus, of between £17,000 and £77,000, a report to ministers shows.

Of those receiving awards for the first time in 2015, just 65 went to women.

Meanwhile, 252 went to men, the report by the Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards found.

Last week, Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, expressed concern that female doctors were far less likely than male doctors to receive clinical excellence awards.

The new figures obtained by the BBC from health trusts, the Government and NHS Digital showed the topearning male consultant in England earned £739,460, compared to £281,616 for the best-paid woman.

Dr Anthea Mowat, of the British Medical Association, said despite recent progress on gender pay, the figures showed there was “clearly still a long way to go”.

She added: “With women making up the majority of medical graduates in recent years, it’s vitally important that we address the root causes of the gender pay gap, and develop a wider programme of work to eliminate it across the medical workforce.”