Dr Brendan McKeating, Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee
Speech for 2005 ARM
29 June 2005
Chairman, RB,
Good morning, RB. I am Brendan McKeating and I am Chairman of the BMA's Armed Forces Committee. I replaced John Ferguson in October last year, and would like to offer my thanks on behalf of the Committee for the sterling work that John has undertaken over the past few years.
Just some background on myself. I am an NHS GP working in Nottingham, having previously served for 16 years as a regular in the Royal Navy and continue to serve in the Naval Reserve.
Ladies and gentlemen whether you agree or disagree with the war in Iraq, I hope you would all agree that our service men and women deserve the highest level of medical care that this country can provide. This is provide time and again by the doctors serving in the defence medical services and reserves. There are problems, however, in that there is chronic under-manning in many acute specialties and primary care.
This has not been helped by the effects of the new NHS GP and consultant contracts which have produced a widening gap in pay between the NHS and the defence medical services.
Over the past year, the Armed Forces Committee has worked to proide robust and concrete evidence for the Armed Forces Pay Review Body to show evidence of this widening gap. We recommended a 6.1% pay rise. This figure came from the dynamising factor produced by the Technical Steering Committee for calculating NHS GP pensions with 90% confidence levels. For consultants we requested the same award based on figures from the NHS' own ready reckoner for consultants to compare new and old contracts.
Unfortunately, the AFPRB were not persuaded by our evidence and awarded 3.225% which members found disappointing.
Our aim is that armed forces doctors should be paid the same as their civilian counterparts plus the X factor (a pay uplift given to all servicemen to take into account the turbulence of service life). AFPRB were not forthcoming as to why this evidence was rejected. There were some good points, however, in their report. Firstly, they recognised that the defence medical services face a serious recruitment and retention challenge.
Secondly, they accepted that the new NHS contracts for GPs and consultants were an appropriate comparator. Another positive move was the introduction of the remuneration package for reservists mobilised for deployment.
This will hopefully go some way to improving the possible financial problems reservists might face when called up. There are, however, problems with reserve issues relating to how different trusts treat doctors with a reserve commitment in that some are well supported if called up whilst others feel they have been penalised. Many doctors still use their holiday entitlement to meet annual training commitment.
RB, I call upon you to continue to fully support this group of doctors who not only have to meet all the requirement of civilian practice, but in addition have to keep up to date with their particular military skills.
RB, I move.