Doctors could have some of their student loan debts written off as part of a package of measures being examined by Wes Streeting that may help avert next week’s strike.
The Department of Health and Social Care is analysing how a new system of “forgiveness” could be brought in for younger doctors who are paying back student debts of up to £100,000.
The health secretary and the co-chairs of the British Medical Association (BMA) resident doctors committee are holding talks on Thursday afternoon aimed at averting the latter’s planned five-day strike starting on 25 July.
The health department is considering several different ways such a scheme might work, according to well-placed sources. They include not charging interest on debt accrued by trainee doctors while they were at medical school – in effect, freezing the debt – and cutting the overall debt by a certain sum for every year the doctor works in the NHS in England.
Advocates of debt relief believe it would incentivise doctors to stay in the NHS rather than quit, and would show the government was willing to improve their finances but without giving them big annual pay rises that would prompt other public sector workers to seek the same.
The BMA’s resident doctors committee wants Streeting to give a 29% pay rise over the next few years to the 55,000 doctors in training in England that it represents. It has conducted a long-running campaign to restore the full value of salaries to the level they were at in 2008. Streeting has refused to reopen negotiations on the 5.4% award for this year that he imposed on them in May.
The DHSC has begun modelling the practicalities of a debt relief scheme as it explores what steps it, and NHS trusts, which directly employ medics, could take to meet doctors’ concerns about non-pay issues that cause them frustration.
It is also looking at whether doctors could have some or all of the costs covered for taking exams needed to progress their careers, and making it easier for younger doctors to take annual leave.
Streeting has said doctors are unlikely to encounter a health secretary as sympathetic as he is to their desire to improve their working lives. While he cannot offer resident doctors a bigger pay rise this year, he has said, he is aware that being able to commit to progress on non-pay-related issues – which he has more freedom to deliver – could show them that this is the case.
Debt forgiveness is a key priority for the BMA, which may see it becoming an issue on which the two sides can find common ground. The co-chairs of the resident doctor committee, Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, indicated that they would consider any proposal from the government on debt write-off.
Crucially, they added that it could act as “an element” of them realising their ambition of restoring the value of doctors’ pay. “If wiping out student loans for doctors in England is something the government is considering, then we would be interested to see the details of what that means in practical terms.
“Loan forgiveness is something we would have to consider as a committee as an element of restoring value to doctors’ working lives, and so if the government is serious about this then we look forward to hearing more from the health secretary in today’s meeting.”
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They said students could finish five years of medical school with debts of up to £100,000 and then face monthly loan repayments of up to 10% of their salary “for most of their working lives”.
Any student debt write-off scheme for doctors would be complicated for the government, require the Treasury’s approval and encourage other health unions to lobby for their members to be included too. In March the Royal College of Nursing proposed that nurses should have 30% of their students debt written off after working in the NHS for three years, 70% after seven years and the remainder after 10 years service.
However, in its response to the RCN report a government spokesperson said that the Department for Education had “no plans” to forgive student debt for “any specific profession”.
A DHSC spokesperson said: “We wouldn’t comment on speculation. The secretary of state has always been clear that he is willing to work with the BMA to improve the working conditions of their members and is meeting them today to discuss exactly that and to urge the BMA to step back from their unnecessary industrial action.”