NHS bosses deserve six-figure salaries, says health chief

NHS bosses deserve six-figure salaries, says health chief Sir David Nicholson stands up for managers as figures show their pay rose twice as fast as that of nurses last year.

NHS bosses deserve salaries that are rising faster than those of nurses because of their complex jobs and difficult jobs, the chief executive of NHS England has said.

Sir David Nicholson, the outgoing health chief, said it was wrong to constantly "denigrate" those at the top of the NHS, and blamed the constant reorganisations of the health service for the rising bill for managerial pay.

He stood up for NHS executives at a hearing of the House of Commons health committee after Sir Bruce Keogh, the Whitehall medical director, said it was right for some to get "very significant" salaries.

Official figures show the pay of NHS bosses rose twice as fast as that of nurses last year, with nearly 50 executives at NHS England now earning more than the prime minister.

However, Nicholson – who earns £211,249 a year – said no one should be "surprised" at the six-figure salaries as they are allowed under government frameworks.

"People deserve the pay that the system we set up identifies they should get," Nicholson said.

"First of all, we are going to be talking about some of the biggest and most significant changes the NHS has ever seen and we really do need good top drawer people. If we constantly denigrate and criticise them they are going to respond. We have a responsibility to support those people in incredibly difficult jobs. The second thing I'd say is if people would stop constantly reorganising the NHS we'd have less of this turbulence.

"Those chief executive jobs – the complexity of those are on a scale managerially that most of us would have difficulty to understand."

Valerie Vaz, a Labour MP, said the committee was "amazed by the response" at a time when nurses are suffering pay cuts and freezes.

"I appreciate you'll see Sir Bruce Keogh the next day, and you may not see the nurse who has got her hand in someone's heart or wound," she said.

She also accused Nicholson of "sitting there as if you've just washed your hands of the whole NHS" after he could not say how many bosses have been re-hired by the health service shortly after getting big redundancy packages in the latest reorganisation.

Nicholson said he had written to all his NHS authorities asking for managers with redundancy packages not to take other jobs in the service for at least six months, but admitted there was no way of enforcing this. He added that it was known the government's reforms would cost £600m in redundancies and pointed out that overall costs have been going down under the changes.

The outgoing NHS chief defended the current levels of remuneration after the Deparment of Health warned that rising executive pay could risk cuts to the number of nurses and a struggle to maintain the quality of patient care.

Nicholson was also quizzed about the latest reorganisation of NHS funding, which will see £2bn transferred from the health service to a new fund that helps councils provide more care in the community.

He said the current plans may be seen as "risky" and he is "worried about governance" as the changes are not being overseen by a single body, but rather by the NHS and lots of local authorities.

"It is a highly ambitious – some might regard it as risky – thing to do to shift money in the way that's being done. It will provoke a whole lot of change in health and social care. The issue is we need to harness that for positive." The Guardian