NHS CONFEDERATION
ORAL EVIDENCE
TO THE
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE
INQUIRY (PEX 20A)
As you may recall, during my oral evidence to
the Committee's public expenditure inquiry on 26 October I undertook
to double check the figures I quoted in response to the opening
question, as I did not have precise references to hand at the
time.[60]
Having checked these figures, I have a few minor
corrections to make.
Firstly, I am not certain whether I misspoke
slightly or whether this is an error on the transcript, but the
sentence, "Derek Wanless reckoned that new policy would cost
between 1% and 2% extra a year" should strictly speaking
state that "Derek Wanless estimated that new policy and technology
would add around 1-2% extra a year."
Secondly, with regard to the figure I quoted
for the cost of incremental pay drift, colleagues in NHS Employers
have advised me that a more reliable estimate to use is that available
for pay drift (which includes "churn"—joiners
and leavers and promotions—but is not exactly the same as
"cost of increments"). This is around 1.6%, which equates
to £688 million or less than 0.7% of the 2010-11 NHS budget.
Finally, with regard to the figure I quoted
as the saving resulting from the two year pay freeze for people
paid more than £21,000, colleagues in NHS Employers have
advised me that this probably saves between £1 to 1.5 billion
over the two years, depending of course on the amount of the pay
increase that would otherwise have been awarded.
I hope these minor corrections can be reflected
in the final report.
Nigel Edwards
Acting Chief Executive
60 Q129. Back
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