Nearly half of NHS staff not medically trained

MPS call for health service review as fears grow that funds from tax rise will be wasted on bureaucracy

Almost half of all NHS staff are managers, administrators or unqualified assistants, it has emerged, as Boris Johnson came under pressure to reform the health service. Meanwhile, the number of NHS managers paid more than the Prime Minister is about to rise to more than 400. With £36 billion extra going to the NHS and social care, funded by a 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance, MPS said it was time for a thorough review of NHS spending.

ALMOST half of all NHS staff are managers, administrators or unqualified assistants, it has emerged, as Boris Johnson came under pressure to insist on health service reforms as the price of increased funding.

The proportion of clinical staff who are professionally trained has declined from 55.5 per cent in 2013 to just 52.5 per cent now, meaning 47.5 per cent of staff have no medical qualifications.

Separately, it has emerged that the number of NHS managers paid more than the Prime Minister is about to rise to more than 400. Some hospitals have as many as nine managers earning more than Mr Johnson’s £157,000 salary.

With £36billion extra going to the NHS and social care, funded by a 1.25 percentage point increase in National Insurance, MPS said it was time for a root and branch review of NHS spending.

One said it was time to have an “honest conversation” about the NHS to avoid the UK becoming “a health service with a country attached to it”.

Figures published by NHS Digital show that the number of managers, backroom staff and unqualified assistants employed by NHS Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups has steadily crept up as a proportion of the total staff since 2013.

Although the number of professionally qualified clinical staff – including doctors and nurses – is at a record high of 629,151, numbers of infrastructure and support staff have increased at a faster rate, accounting for 568,596 of the near 1.2 million total.

Critics of Mr Johnson’s tax rise fear it will be squandered on NHS bureaucracy because the money was awarded before the Government had calculated exactly how much the health service needed, and for what.

Huge sums could also be swallowed up by pay rises and fresh executives who are currently being recruited to run new integrated care boards.

Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph reported that the NHS is hiring an army of 42 new managers on salaries of up to £270,000 to run the new bodies. With 374 managers in the NHS already earning more than the Prime Minister, the new jobs mean that figure could go above 400. This newspaper also established that some NHS Trusts employ multiple directors on salaries of more than £200,000.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust pays its group chief executive Sir Mike Deegan £280,000, while eight other managers also earn more than £160,000, including two who earn in excess of £200,000.

King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust in London, which pays its chief executive Prof Clive Kay £300,000, has three other managers on more than £180,000. Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust pays five managers more than £165,000, including its chief executive Dr Bruno Holthof who earns £290,000.

Marcus Fysh, one of five Tory MPS who voted against the Government’s proposed tax rise, said: “We are all very grateful to all of the staff who work incredibly hard for the NHS, but it’s time now to have an honest conversation about the NHS. It should not be a sacred cow.

“We need to consider various different types of reform to make sure frontline staff have the best opportunity to help their patients in the way that they want to. We are now a health service and social-entitlement system with a country attached, and that is not sustainable.”

Yesterday, Lord Prior of Brampton, the chairman of NHS England, told the Royal Society of Medicine that the health service must not repeat the mistakes made by Labour under Tony Blair, when extra money for the NHS failed to improve outcomes for patients.

He said: “Back in the mid-2000s, when the Labour government put a lot of money into the health service, we ended up with ... a lot of surgeons, particularly orthopaedic surgeons, making a lot of money by doing a lot of that work at private sector rates, and all the spillover into other parts of the hospital that caused. What we can’t do is have a real repeat of that.” Yesterday, Sajid Javid, the Heath Secretary, admitted NHS waiting lists would get worse before they get better.

Speaking on a visit to Moorfields Eye Hospital, he said: “The waiting lists will go up before they go down again.

“We’ve seen that around seven million people haven’t come forward in the normal way because of the pandemic.

“We want them to come forward and we want to tell them the NHS is open. I know with this catch-up fund, and the innovation the NHS can do, we can tackle the waiting lists.”

A spokesman for NHS England said figures for unqualified staff included nursing assistants and healthcare assistants who work with patients, meaning the proportion of staff working on wards was far higher than 52.5 per cent.

NHS England also said that some of the 374 current managerial roles which come with salaries higher than the Prime Minister’s will be abolished when the 42 new integrated care boards begin work next April, subject to parliamentary approval.

‘It’s time to have an honest conversation about the NHS. It should not be a sacred cow’