NHS leaders’ salaries rise three times as much as the average

Review calls for restraint as bosses’ pay goes up 65 per cent in a decade, compared with 18 per cent for others

THE pay of NHS senior managers has risen by 65 per cent in the past 10 years – more than three times the rise seen by workers across the rest of the economy, Government documents show.

Analysis reveals that in the past decade, the highest salaries for senior managers have risen to up to £310,000 a year.

Think tanks last night said the disclosures showed how a “public-sector aristocracy” continued to thrive, as much of the country faces a cost-of-living crisis.

Nurses and health visitors have seen earnings increase by 35 per cent, with a rise of 32 per cent for midwives, since 2010/11, according to the Government’s submission to the NHS Pay Review Body.

This compares with an average pay increase of 18 per cent for workers across the UK over the same period, the same document shows.

But the rise in earnings for bureaucrats has far outpaced this – with a 65 per cent increase for senior and very senior managers, and a rise of 59 per cent for junior and middle managers.

Earnings for the most senior managers are under review, with a new framework expected later this year.

Earlier this month, the Health Secretary announced an £8 billion plan to tackle record waiting backlogs, as six million people wait for operations.

The pay submission calls for “financial restraint on pay” warning of “extremely limited room for any further investment”.

Every additional 1 per cent pay rise for NHS staff means half a million fewer operations for patients, or 16,000 fewer nurses, it warns.

But the documents also show thousands of staff have enjoyed a decade of rises far above the rest of the economy.

The latest submissions show those classed as “very senior managers” – which include thousands of executives at hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups – are now earning an average of £145,000 annually.

The highest-paid hospital managers are earning up to £310,000 a year, board reports show. Meanwhile, nurses are being paid an average of £34,000, with midwives on £36,000. The research comes from a detailed analysis of 500,000 NHS workers, who have been employed there since 2011.

Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said the figures showed that far too much of the Department of

Health’s budget of close to £200billion has been spent on “inflated salaries for bureaucrats and managers”.

“The UK spends more money on healthcare than most EU countries and yet we have half as many hospital beds as Estonia and only two-thirds as many doctors as Lithuania,” he said.

“Protected from the discipline of the free market, the NHS’s near-monopoly on healthcare has allowed a culture of entitlement and extravagance to flourish. While the rest of the country endures a cost-of-living crisis, the public sector aristocracy continues to thrive.”

Callum Price, from the Centre for Policy Studies, said the “secret” of NHS pay deals was that any deal was not an average, or a cap, but the bare minimum staff would receive.

He said: “With taxes on working people going up to fund yet more NHS spending, it will be a bitter pill for many to see just how much NHS pay has outstripped the private sector in the last decade.”

An NHS spokesman said: “Pay rates for senior leaders are in line with those for people with similar responsibilities in other sectors, and actually the NHS is one of the most efficient health services in the world, with administrative costs of less than 2p in every pound of NHS funding, compared to 5p in Germany and 6p in France.”

The Department of Health and Social Care argued the figures showing an average pay rise of 65 per cent for senior NHS managers cannot be compared with the 18 per cent increase for workers across the UK.

It said the 18 per cent rise refers to average earnings population-wide, including new entrants into the labour market, while the 65 per cent figure is based on the experience of individuals and includes the impact of promotions and annual pay awards.

‘While the rest of the country endures a cost-of-living crisis the public sector aristocracy continues to thrive’