Golden goodbye comes as wider workforce faces below-inflation wage rise
Jo-Anne Wass, HR director at NHS England, will continue receiving her £155,000 salary for two years after she leaves the post at the end of this month, it has been reported in the national press.
The HR executive, who is leaving the NHS on “secondment”, will join Leeds University as an organisational development consultant, according to an NHS England spokesperson.
However, Wass has indicated that she “has no intention of returning” to the NHS role.
Asked about the secondment arrangements, NHS England told Health Service Journal it would pay Ms Wass’ salary for “up to two years”.
Pay figures show that she is one of 290 NHS senior officials taking home at least £100,000 a year. She is due to exit the organisation as chief executive Sir David Nicholson, who she worked closely with at the Department of Health, prepares to retire. Sir David was questioned by MPs last year over allegations that NHS whistleblowers had been gagged with clauses in their severance pay agreements. He denied being involved in any cover up of poor standards in the health service.
News of the exit package given to Wass has angered union members, as ministers yesterday (Thursday) announced a below-inflation 1 per cent pay rise for NHS staff in England.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients’ Association said Wass’ pay deal “beggars belief”, going on to describe it as “a terrible waste of money when we have seen such shortages of nurses in some hospitals”.
At the end of 2013, health secretary Jeremy Hunt signalled a clamp-down on what was viewed as excessive reward for senior executives in the NHS. In 2012 the health service had paid nearly 8,000 NHS hospital managers and consultants six-figure salaries.
The health secretary rejected recommendations from the NHS pay review body to award all NHS staff a 1 per cent rise, labelling it “unaffordable” and “risky”.
He said that rather than a blanket rise for the whole workforce, 600,000 nurses and other medical staff, who are set to receive automatic pay progression worth an average 3 per cent, will not be given the additional 1 per cent rise on the 1st of April. Hunt told the BBC that they would have to cut 6,000 nursing jobs if the 1 per cent rise was rolled out across the board.
Unison’s head of health Christina McAnea said the government had shown complete contempt for NHS staff and incremental pay should not be compared to an annual pay rise.
“Increments are designed to reflect the growing skills and experience of nurses and other healthcare workers and are closely linked to competency. They are not a substitute for the annual pay rise that is needed to meet the increasing cost of living,” she said.
Hunt’s decision on the public sector pay settlement was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Unite’s head of health, Rachael Maskell.
“The fact that Jo-Anne Wass will continue to receive her six figure salary for two years after leaving just shows the glaring pay inequality in the NHS between the elite top bosses and the rest of the workforce,” she said.
“Given [Hunt’s] announcement on pay, which will see 600,000 NHS staff receive no cost of living increase on 1 April, the Wass package adds insult to injury.”
The Treasury also announced yesterday that individual departments would have to make a greater contribution to pensions. For the NHS, this means be a 0.3 per cent increase, working out at £125m a year from 2015-16.
The move is expected to free up an extra £1bn ahead of the budget, to spend on infrastructure projects.
One Whitehall source said: "There will be a £1bn figure in the budget roughly – just under. This will be scored – it will be a saving to the treasury which has been picking up this bill before. Instead it will fall into departmental budgets."