Dr Poulter – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dr Poulter on 2015-10-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what criteria the Government and NHS employers will use to distinguish between residential and non-residential on call duties in the proposed new contract for junior doctors.

Ben Gummer

The concepts of “residential” and “non-residential” on-call do not exist in the current contract for doctors and dentists in training, nor will they exist in the new contract arrangements being proposed. These are colloquial terms used to refer to some of the current working arrangements, which include on-call rotas, partial shifts, full shifts and some hybrid arrangements.

Currently there are pay banding supplements, on top of basic salary, the levels of which are determined by working hours and patterns.

Under the proposals for a new contract, banding supplements will end. In their place will be increased basic pay, plus proportionate pay for additional hours, with a premium rate of pay for hours worked in the unsocial hours period. There will also be on-call availability supplements for being on an on-call rota, i.e. being available to return to work but not expected to be on-site for the whole period. These supplements will be a percentage of pay, of different values depending on the frequency of the on-call commitment.

These proposals are – as in other respects – substantially the same as those agreed when the hon. Member was a Minister.