Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to take steps to increase the pay of junior doctors in line with inflation.

Junior doctors are currently in a collectively agreed four-year pay deal from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2023. The deal states that the investment in each year is a total of 2.3% in 2019/20 and 3% in 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.

Of this, 2% each year was used to provide an annual pay uplift, whereas the remaining investment of approximately £90 million was used to fund other specific changes. These changes cover a new higher nodal point, an uplift to the weekend allowance, an enhanced rate of pay for shifts that finish after midnight and by 4am, a £1,000 a year less than full-time allowance, changes to the academic pay premia and extension of transitional pay protection. This was agreed by both staff side and employers as part of their negotiations. The Department continues to honour the agreement entered into with trades unions.