NHS chief accuses Jeremy Hunt of 'own goal' over pay rises

Simon Stevens insists increases should not depend on higher productivity and health secretary must find new money to boost salaries

The head of the NHS has rejected Jeremy Hunt’s insistence that its staff’s pay rise next year should depend on them improving their productivity as “an own goal of the first magnitude”.

Simon Stevens’s remarks set him on a collision course with the health secretary weeks before the budget, in which Philip Hammond is expected to set out what salary increase the NHS’s 1.7 million staff will get from next April.

Related: Pay cap on NHS staff to be lifted, Jeremy Hunt tells Commons

Continue reading... November 01, 2017 at 12:31AM