Doctors up for longer hours for more overtime pay, says Keir Starmeron October 8, 2023 at 2:14 pm

Doctors and nurses will volunteer for weekend work to bring down waiting lists if they are paid more overtime, Sir Keir Starmer has told the BBC.

The Labour leader wants to spend £1.1bn a year on higher overtime payments in NHS England to get waiting lists down.

The cash would come from scrapping the non-dom tax status.

The plan relies on doctors and nurses volunteering for extra shifts – but Sir Keir said it would be in their interests to do so.

He acknowledged that NHS staff were already under strain and that many of them could earn more by working in the private sector at weekends.

Including money that would be allocated to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – where health decisions are devolved – the total cost of the policy would be £1.5bn.

Labour’s overtime payments in England would not match the wages doctors and nurses can earn in the private sector, but Sir Keir said the party had spoken to staff organisations and he was confident they would get behind his plan.

“They are up for this because they know that bringing down waiting lists will relieve pressure on them in the long run,” he told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire.

He said it would not require a new pay deal with NHS staff.

“You don’t need to change the contract because we will be paying them proper rates out of hours,” he said.

The British Medical Association – which recently staged a walkout by junior doctors and consultants in support of its demand for a 35% pay rise – said Sir Keir’s plan was no substitute for restoring wages to where they should be.

Professor Philip Banfield, BMA council chair, said: “The vast majority of doctors already take on extra work. For far too long, it has been our goodwill keeping the health service afloat.

“Paying doctors properly for overtime is not only the right thing to do but would be more cost effective than using the private sector or making extracontractual payments.

“While this move may very well incentivise further overtime, it is only once doctors receive restoration of lost relative value, will we be in a position to look at the impact that this extra overtime funding may have on waiting lists.”

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea, who represents some nurses and other NHS staff, said: “This is fine as a stop-gap measure, but this is all it must be.

“Health workers are already up against it and there are only so many hours in a day. But a voluntary scheme, where staff are paid fairly, that avoids the use of expensive agencies, makes sense in the short term.”

Royal College of Nursing Chief Nurse Professor Nicola Ranger said the NHS already “runs on the goodwill of its staff”.

“Nursing staff work so much overtime that is never paid – staying behind an hour or two after 12-hour shifts to keep patients safe – so a change in this culture is needed. As part of their shift patterns, weekend work is routine for many.

“Any Labour government would likely take office at a time of record unfilled nurse jobs, in excess of 40,000, and so the long-term answer is of course to have more staff overall.”

Labour has said it would train 7,500 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses a year, to be funded by the extra cash in the government’s NHS England workforce plan.

The overtime plan would be something an incoming Labour government could do immediately to tackle waiting lists, party sources say.

Sir Keir said his plan – which he claims would create two million hospital appointments a year – was crucial to his “mission” to get the UK’s economy growing.

Labour is committed to making the UK the fastest growing economy in the G7 group of leading industrial nations.

“I am confident we will get that growth. It is the single defining mission of an incoming Labour government,” Sir Keir said.

Asked how quickly people would see results, he said “within months”, claiming policies such as planning reforms and moves to attract investment could happen “very quickly” after Labour took office.

The UK economy has grown strongly since the end of 2019 and is no longer the worst performer in the G7, doing better than Germany, although still lagging behind the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy and France.

Labour has set out a string of policies it says will be paid for by scrapping non-dom tax status, which the party claims will raise just under £2bn a year.

These include spending £171m on doubling the number of CT scanners in NHS hospitals, £111m on improving dentistry and £365m on free breakfast clubs in primary schools.

Under Labour’s NHS waiting list plan, neighbouring hospitals would also be encouraged to pool staff and use shared waiting lists. Patients would be given the option of travelling to a nearby hospital for treatment on an evening or weekend, rather than wait longer.

In June, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to recruit and train thousands more doctors, nurses and support staff, in a major NHS England workforce plan.