Consultants to get NHS sabbaticals in pay deal

Top consultants in the National Health Service are to be offered paid sabbaticals lasting between two and three months as part of a package of measures designed to break deadlocked pay negotiations that threaten the Government's plans for the NHS.

The inducement will be announced today by Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, to persuade consultants to accept new, locally agreed deals that reward those who do most for the NHS – after they rejected a new national contract last year.

Securing agreement with the consultants is critical if the Government is to meet its manifesto pledge to cut NHS waiting times to a maximum of six months by 2005.

Mr Milburn was furious when the consultants in England overwhelmingly rejected a new contract in November that would have increased their commitment to the NHS in return for average pay increases of 15 per cent.

He is now gambling on achieving the same end by making the sums set aside to fund the new contract – valued at £250m in 2005-06 – available for NHS trusts to agree local deals with their own consultants from April.

A Department of Health source said yesterday: "The aim is to pay most to those who do most for the NHS. We want to properly reward consultants so we get more of their precious time for NHS patients.

"It will involve giving a lot of flexibility to NHS trusts over how they deploy the cash and set up incentive schemes to provide proper rewards to consultants, tied to job-planning and private-practice rules."

Mr Milburn has ruled out re-opening negotiations on a national contract with the British Medical Association (BMA), after consultants in England voted by two to one to reject it against the association's advice. Consultants in Scotland and Northern Ireland narrowly voted to accept the new contract.

They objected to growing interference by management in their work and proposals to extend the working day to include evenings and weekends, as a means of boosting NHS productivity. Curbs on private practice for younger consultants, who would have been required to do extra work for the NHS before taking on private patients, were also widely resented.

The sabbaticals will initially be offered to 800 senior doctors with at least 20 years' service as consultants, to carry out a project agreed with their NHS trust. The scheme, which would be introduced in 2005-06, would be funded with £15m to provide locum cover for the absent doctors and would be extended later to consultants with 15 years' service.

The BMA declined to comment last night but it has previously said that it would be opposed to any piecemeal introduction of the contract. The NHS Confederation, representing management, said it would welcome "opportunities for trusts to adopt a flexible approach".

NHS managers say opposition to the new contract was greatest in London and the South-east, where private practice is concentrated, despite a provision that said any individual consultant could remain on their existing contract if they wished. In Scotland, consultants voted to accept it.

They say that implementation on a trust-by-trust basis would be possible, provided there is no outright opposition, because consultants would still retain their right to remain on their existing contracts.