It may not be as simple as the BMA suggests, and practices may well not be subject to a legal obligation to backdate any pay award, even if funding is notionally provided for them to do so.
In 2024, the government provided money for practices to fund the increased cost of employing staff – although it's generally accepted that, in all but a very few cases, it was not enough to deliver the headline 6% pay rise to staff, let alone to partners. The same may well happen in 2025. It puts practices in a difficult position. In particular, are they duty-bound to give their salaried GPs the full (or indeed, any of) the 6% pay rise?
The BMA stated on 15 October that "salaried GPs who are on the BMA model salaried GP contract have an entitlement to the full annual DDRB pay uplift award, so it must therefore be paid by employing practices." But is this strictly true?
First, not all salaried GPs are in fact on the BMA model salaried GP contract. The standard GMS and PMS contract both contain terms saying that practices should use the BMA model terms for their salaried GPs – but I know of plenty of practices which don't. That may technically place practices in breach of their obligations to the ICB, but I have never seen an ICB (or a CCG or a PCT) do anything about that. And that term of the GMS contract (or PMS agreement) is not directly enforceable by the employee anyway. So – if the BMA terms aren't used, there is no duty to pass on the pay award.
But even for practices who have employed salaried GPs on the BMA's model terms, there is complexity. What the BMA terms actually say is set out in this document:
The terms of the contract say that the GP's salary "will be increased by annual increments on [incremental date] each year and in accordance with the Government’s decision on the pay of general practitioners following the recommendation of the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body". That date will vary from practice to practice, and possibly even from employee to employee, depending on what is chosen as the "[incremental date]" in each employment contract before it is signed. But strictly, the only contractual obligation is to increase pay on that date. If that date has passed, there is no enforceable obligation on the employer to pass on a pay uplift to the employee until that date comes round next year.
There may be practical pressure on the practice to pass on pay rises immediately, to staff whose expectations have been raised by the government’s statements about pay rises being funded (whether or not those statements are accurate). But that is a different matter to saying that there is a legal obligation to do so – and in my view, practices have some latitude here.
The above applies to salaried GPs only. For any other staff, the answer is simple enough: there is no legal obligation to pass on any of the increased funding. What a member of staff is paid is entirely down to the employee and employer to negotiation (subject of course to any minimum wage and NI increases).
Oliver Pool is a partner at VWV and a member of the Healthcare Community. Email: opool@vwv.co.uk and tel: 0117 314 5429.
*The views expressed are the author’s and not ICAEW’s
