Mr. LeithTo ask the Prime Minister if she will make a statement about the report of the review body for nursing staff, midwives, health visitors and professions allied to medicine on the pay of nursing and midwifery educational staff.
§ The Prime MinisterThe report has been published today, and copies are available in the Vote Office. The Government are grateful to members of the review body for the work which has gone into the preparation of this additional report, which is supplementary to their sixth report on the pay of nurses and midwives in clinical and senior non-educational grades, published in February.
374WThe review body has recommended pay scales, to take effect from 1 April 1989, for the new grading structure for nursing and midwifery educational staff, which was agreed between the two sides of the Nursing and Midwifery Staff Negotiation Council in March 1989. This follows on from the introduction last year of a new grading structure for nurses and midwives who do clinical work. Virtually all the staff concerned have now been regraded on the basis of the new structure. The amount of the pay increase individuals would receive under these recommendations depends on their grading under the old and now under the new structure.
Nearly 80 per cent. of the staff concerned were previously graded H or I under the clinical grading review. Most of these have been allocated to grades 1 or 2 under the new educational grading structure and would receive increases of between 6.8 per cent. and 7.1 per cent.
The review body has recommended proportionately higher increases for the minority of staff in the more senior grades who did not benefit from the introduction of the clinical grading structure in 1988. In addition. many senior tutors will benefit from the fact that the new structure provides for the correction of pay and grading anomalies which arose in 1988, under which some senior tutors were paid no more than, or less than, the tutors they were supervising.
Excluding employers' costs the recommendations are estimated to add some 2.4 per cent. for assimilation costs and an average 7.4 per cent. for the basic pay increase, approximately £11.6 million in total, to the 1989–90 paybill costs for nursing and midwifery education staff in Great Britain.
The Government have decided to accept in full the review body's recommendations, and a formal offer is being made to the staff side today. I hope it will be possible to put the new rates into payment as soon as possible.
The expected cost of the new pay scales for educational staff, including the cost of introducing the new grading structure has already been reflected in the extra allocation made to health authorities following the Government's acceptance in February of the review body's recommendations on the pay of other nursing and midwifery staff.