Downing Street Says

» Thursday, April 19, 2007

Cabinet

Asked what was discussed at Cabinet today, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that there was an overview from the Health Secretary on the Health Service and a report back from the Foreign Secretary on the UNSC meeting this week, this month we are in the chair at the Security Council.

Asked what the overview of the health service related to, the PMOS said that it marked the progress that had been made, particularly the progress that has been made in terms of improving treatment for patients while recognising that that means there are changes in the service which are challenging, which throw up questions that we have to address. The overall message was one of progress in terms of improvements for the patient.

Asked if the Health Secretary explained the increase in pay to consultants when productivity levels had not increased at the same rate, the PMOS said that the second part of the reporters question was not entirely correct. Firstly, again the focus is on the patient, and if you look at the proportion of time consultants spend on direct clinical care that had increased as a proportion of time worked. Equally the overrun in 2005/06 was a relatively small margin of 2.3 percent of the total consultant pay bill. The new contact does link pay progression to performance and therefore that is a real benefit. We make no apology for paying consultants if it means we are able to retain them within the health service and it increases doctor retention which was a real problem in the past.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

April 2007

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

« Mar

May »

» Thursday, April 19, 2007

Cabinet

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries