HCSA has released its Manifesto for Hospital Doctors which singles out the key issues facing the profession and weighs up the offerings from the main parties.
The full document is available for download in PDF format.
Download the 2019 Manifesto and analysis
It singles out four key areas:
1. Funding a health service fit for future challenges
HCSA has called for:
- Annual spending to increase by at least 5 percent annually during each year of the new Parliament. This meets the minimum required if the NHS is to operate on a sustainable footing and to reverse the deterioration in performance.
- An independent review of the ongoing burden of Private Finance
- Initiatives, which will cost the NHS a further £55bn in payments until the time the last contract ends in 2050.
- A substantial one-off capital funding settlement to tackle the backlog, followed by a significantly improved, multiyear capital settlement aimed at bringing the NHS budget in line with comparable economies.
- Investment in a comprehensive IT programme aimed at ensuring that all staff in the NHS have access to the right IT infrastructure to care for their patients. This includes rationalising the number of systems that
- professionals are required to use, ensuring that more time can be dedicated to caring for patients.
- A reversal of social care funding reductions to reduce the pressure on the hospital network.
- A reversal of public health funding cuts and a new focus on prevention.
2. Retaining experience and recruiting the doctors we need
HCSA has called for:
- Steps to be taken to strengthen the independence of the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) and ensure that its remit focuses on keeping track with inflation and earnings trends rather than the budget of the Department for Health and Social Care.
- The Secretary of State to instruct to the DDRB to recommend a ‘catch up’ payment to address the historic erosion of pay for hospital doctors.
- An end to the rip-off pay deal which locks Junior Doctors into below inflation pay rises of 2 percent per year.
- An immediate end to the damaging tapered annual allowance and a review of pension tax relief, to ensure that no further damage is caused to the NHS.
- The government to accept and implement the recommendations of the Gender Pay Gap in Medicine Review when it reports in the near future.
- The establishment of a new review into the ethnicity pay gap.
3. Caring for the carers to deliver safe services
HCSA has called for:
- Compulsory national standards improving and protecting Supporting Professional Activities (SPAs) and Continuing Professional Development – time to ensure that our hospital doctors can update their specialist skills and have the time to train the doctors of tomorrow. A return to a standard of 2.5 PAs for all consultants.
- Roll out the Learn Not Blame campaign established by the Doctors’ Association and supported by HCSA across the NHS.
- Make it a specific criminal offence to attack any member of NHS Medical Staff.
- The establishment of a new national body, comprised of NHS employers, trade unions and Health Education England, working in partnership to: establish minimum staffing levels and ratios; create a short-term, medium and long-term national workforce strategy to achieve fully staffed hospitals, specifically targeting those Trusts “running on empty” by spreading existing staff thinner rather than recruiting; and underpin a new national patient safety strategy.
- A fundamental review of whistleblowing regulations, including the creation of a new independent, statutory Office of the Whistleblower.
- Parking charges for NHS staff to be scrapped.
- A start and finish group with the goal of building a modern, flexible workplace environment, drawing up policy for application in NHS hospitals to ensure we offer and get the best from trained doctors of all ethnicities and genders, and those with family or other commitments.
4. Beyond Brexit: Long-term planning for a stable NHS
HCSA has called for:
- EU health professionals to receive permanent residence status, both now and after any Brexit deal is implemented.
- A removal of all fees and an exemption from the Immigration Health Surcharge via an NHS visa aimed at doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.
- An urgent independent review of the impact of immigration rules on the NHS, with the aim of introducing a simplified system.
- The government to replace the Health & Social Care Act 2012 in England, which has led to fragmented care, and wasteful enforced competition and tendering for services. A new structure should be introduced focusing on collaboration rather than competition.
Download the 2019 Manifesto and party policy analysis