NHS faces big risk from back pay claims
NHS staff claims for back pay under the Agenda for Change (AfC) contract are the 'biggest risk' to the Department of Health's pay and workforce strategy. The draft strategy, seen by HSJ, claims that there are currently nearly 11,000 back pay claims outstanding from lawyers acting on a no-win, no-fee basis, as well as trade unions representing NHS staff members, with the number rising by about 200 claims a month.
In the note on risk and obstacles to the workforce strategy, the workforce directorate said it expected the situation will 'become clearer' following a number of hearings on leading cases later this year.
Mike Jackson, Unison's lead negotiator on AfC, told HSJ that some back-pay claims had arisen because a number of clear cases of gender discrimination had come to light.
Last March, following a landmark case, North Cumbria Acute Hospitals trust agreed to pay 1,500 female staff arrears dating as far back as 1991 as part of an equal value settlement which it costed at £60m, and which predated the introduction of AfC.
'Under sex discrimination legislation staff can claim six years' worth of back pay. However, until Agenda for Change was implemented we did not reliably know where the discrimination existed,' said Mr Jackson.
He confirmed the DoH's predicted figures although he said that last October (a month after the DoH memo was written), 1,000 new claims had been lodged.
Mr Jackson said that if the claims were successful the government could be forced to pay out millions of pounds to NHS staff.
'Unison put a claim in to both NHS Employers and the DoH to settle the back-pay claims last year but they weren't interested in negotiating with us and that is when we started to lodge the claims at employment tribunals,' he said.
Mr Jackson said that he expected the first case for a back-pay claim under AfC to be heard at a tribunal in Newcastle in February.
NHS Employers head of pay Gill Bellord said the organisation was confident that AfC's job evaluation system would provide a defence against equal pay claims in the future. But she said the organisation was aware that a large number of retrospective equal pay claims were being lodged against trusts.
She advised: 'We know that employers have real concerns about the possible impact of equal pay claims and they should register claims with the NHS Litigation Authority in the first instance as a consistent approach to handling claims could help to minimise total costs to the NHS.'
From:
http://www.hsj.co.uk/healthservicejournal/pages/n2/p9/070104
As Labour's Agenda for Change was the driving force behind the pay rise fiasco when NHS pay rises claim half of extra £5.5bn funding it looks as though this incompetence is going to continue.
On Nov 24, 06 Health Direct noted that almost half of last year's £5.5bn increase in health spending in England went on higher pay, the latest figures from the Department of Health show. This year, the department expects to incur a redundancy bill of about £400m from shrinking the number of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts.
The redundancy bill, which excludes any redundancies from National Health Service trusts shedding jobs to balance their books, is four times the projected overspend for this year. In addition, the department spent a mighty £133m on external consultants last year.
The figures come from the department's annual expenditure memorandum to the Commons health committee and show that of the extra spending last year, 56 per cent went on staff.
However, of that 47 per cent - almost £2.6bn - went on higher pay and a mere 9 per cent on extra staff.
And more recently on Dec 18, 06 in Labour's mismanagement has led to NHS deficits when mismanagement at all levels of the NHS in England has led to the current multimillion pound deficit, a committee of MPs has found. The Commons health select committee said existing deficits were made worse by the cost of new staff pay deals and the expense of meeting NHS targets. Last year's NHS deficit was £547m.
The committee said historic deficits, long hidden, were revealed when the government changed the rules so trusts could not underspend their capital budget to subsidise current spending.
But it said the government fuelled the problem by agreeing to new pay deals for doctors and nurses using estimates of the cost which were "hopelessly unrealistic".
In addition, meeting national targets such as the requirement that no patient should wait more than four hours in A&E had been costly.
Changing targets at short notice also placed unnecessary financial costs on trusts, the report said. It attacked short-term measures being used by the government to address deficits.
And it said raiding staff training budgets was "unacceptable", and warned such cuts were affecting staff morale and could damage the quality of the workforce.
In the note on risk and obstacles to the workforce strategy, the workforce directorate said it expected the situation will 'become clearer' following a number of hearings on leading cases later this year.
Mike Jackson, Unison's lead negotiator on AfC, told HSJ that some back-pay claims had arisen because a number of clear cases of gender discrimination had come to light.
Last March, following a landmark case, North Cumbria Acute Hospitals trust agreed to pay 1,500 female staff arrears dating as far back as 1991 as part of an equal value settlement which it costed at £60m, and which predated the introduction of AfC.
'Under sex discrimination legislation staff can claim six years' worth of back pay. However, until Agenda for Change was implemented we did not reliably know where the discrimination existed,' said Mr Jackson.
He confirmed the DoH's predicted figures although he said that last October (a month after the DoH memo was written), 1,000 new claims had been lodged.
Mr Jackson said that if the claims were successful the government could be forced to pay out millions of pounds to NHS staff.
'Unison put a claim in to both NHS Employers and the DoH to settle the back-pay claims last year but they weren't interested in negotiating with us and that is when we started to lodge the claims at employment tribunals,' he said.
Mr Jackson said that he expected the first case for a back-pay claim under AfC to be heard at a tribunal in Newcastle in February.
NHS Employers head of pay Gill Bellord said the organisation was confident that AfC's job evaluation system would provide a defence against equal pay claims in the future. But she said the organisation was aware that a large number of retrospective equal pay claims were being lodged against trusts.
She advised: 'We know that employers have real concerns about the possible impact of equal pay claims and they should register claims with the NHS Litigation Authority in the first instance as a consistent approach to handling claims could help to minimise total costs to the NHS.'
From:
http://www.hsj.co.uk/healthservicejournal/pages/n2/p9/070104
As Labour's Agenda for Change was the driving force behind the pay rise fiasco when NHS pay rises claim half of extra £5.5bn funding it looks as though this incompetence is going to continue.
On Nov 24, 06 Health Direct noted that almost half of last year's £5.5bn increase in health spending in England went on higher pay, the latest figures from the Department of Health show. This year, the department expects to incur a redundancy bill of about £400m from shrinking the number of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts.
The redundancy bill, which excludes any redundancies from National Health Service trusts shedding jobs to balance their books, is four times the projected overspend for this year. In addition, the department spent a mighty £133m on external consultants last year.
The figures come from the department's annual expenditure memorandum to the Commons health committee and show that of the extra spending last year, 56 per cent went on staff.
However, of that 47 per cent - almost £2.6bn - went on higher pay and a mere 9 per cent on extra staff.
And more recently on Dec 18, 06 in Labour's mismanagement has led to NHS deficits when mismanagement at all levels of the NHS in England has led to the current multimillion pound deficit, a committee of MPs has found. The Commons health select committee said existing deficits were made worse by the cost of new staff pay deals and the expense of meeting NHS targets. Last year's NHS deficit was £547m.
The committee said historic deficits, long hidden, were revealed when the government changed the rules so trusts could not underspend their capital budget to subsidise current spending.
But it said the government fuelled the problem by agreeing to new pay deals for doctors and nurses using estimates of the cost which were "hopelessly unrealistic".
In addition, meeting national targets such as the requirement that no patient should wait more than four hours in A&E had been costly.
Changing targets at short notice also placed unnecessary financial costs on trusts, the report said. It attacked short-term measures being used by the government to address deficits.
And it said raiding staff training budgets was "unacceptable", and warned such cuts were affecting staff morale and could damage the quality of the workforce.
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