Thousands of health care professionals working for the NHS may be denied a Covid backlog bonus payment due to the way they are employed. Campaign groups said the Government's pay deal is "treating many thousands of staff unfairly" by not including those working for social enterprises, charities and other not-for-profit providers as eligible for a payment worth as much as £1,600.
They said there is a danger of creating a "two-tier" system among health sector staff if ministers do not rectify the situation, with close to 18,000 people backing a petition calling for the decision to be reviewed. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said independent providers of NHS services are "not eligible to receive funding for the non-consolidated awards" included in the wage package, such as the one-off bonus payment.
Part of the deal struck between ministers and health unions in May saw eligible staff on the Agenda for Change contract - which includes nurses, paramedics, 999 call handlers, midwives, security guards and cleaners - receive a 5% pay rise, backdated to April. As part of the same deal, those eligible have also begun receiving a one-off payment for last year and a so-called NHS backlog bonus for this year, worth between £1,250 and £1,600 depending on an employee's pay band.
The pact followed protracted pay disputes which led to strikes in the NHS. But, despite the issue being settled for the majority of the 1.3 million staff on Agenda for Change contracts, some staff have complained that, even though they deliver NHS services, they are not eligible for the Covid backlog bonus.
They say there is no difference in the service they provide compared with a colleague on an NHS contract, other than that they get paid by an outside firm. Unions and membership bodies have told Health Secretary Steve Barclay that social enterprises and community interest companies providing NHS services could struggle to retain staff and maintain care levels if the bonus has to come out of their own budgets.
In a letter dated June 29, Social Enterprise UK, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), the Royal College of Midwives, Unison, Unite, the Royal College of Podiatry and the British Dietetic Association urged the Cabinet minister to review the situation. They said the UK Government should intervene to bridge the financial gap like ministers did during a similar pay dispute in 2018.
The signatories told Mr Barclay: "Our position is that staff in independent health and care organisations deserve pay, terms and conditions that match their colleagues in the NHS. We want to avoid an inequitable, two-tier system. Yet without additional funding to cover all elements of the deal, pressure and risk will fall on patients and beneficiaries, staff and indeed these organisations' very existence as sustainable providers of NHS services."
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A Department of Health spokeswoman told the PA news agency it plans to respond to the letter sent to Mr Barclay but the Government's position has not changed. It comes as a parliamentary petition about the row nears 18,000 signatures.
The petition urges ministers to "fully fund the 2022 non-consolidated pay award" for those organisations providing NHS funded services in order to "enable them to pay their staff this award".
The petition says: "The NHS family is made up of many provider organisations that provide NHS-funded services through commissioned contracts. We believe the recent non-consolidated pay award should also be fully funded for these organisations."
In its response to the petition, the DHSC said in a statement: "Independent providers were not eligible to receive funding for the non-consolidated awards. Independent providers remain free to develop and adapt their own terms and conditions of employment.
"It is for them to determine what is affordable within the financial model they operate, and how to recoup any additional costs they face."
The Press Association said it had been told a significant number of community physios, often dealing with conditions sparked by home working or that went untreated during the pandemic, are impacted by the dispute.
CSP assistant director Elaine Sparkes said: "We are working with a number of organisations who deliver NHS services to help them get the funding they need to pay our members fairly for the contribution they are making. We are doing this both as the CSP and collectively with other health unions and hope a good outcome can be reached."
