Health and care sector latest developments
Government confirms increases to Minimum Income Guarantee
The government has confirmed a 7 per cent rise to the Minimum Income Guarantee (MIG), meaning that working-age adults who receive social care will receive at least £400 more a year to help with living costs.
Alongside this announcement, the government has also highlighted that £723 million will be made available for the Disabled Facilities Grant next year.
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Mencap, said the ‘ultimate aim is to build a society where social care is free at the point of need’, describing the MIG rise as ‘a welcome step in the right direction’.
Care minister, Stephen Kinnock, said that today's steps are ‘part of (the government’s) widerplans to build a National Care Service rooted in quality, fairness, and dignity for all that use it’.
NHS ‘clearly failing’ to ensure children get measles vaccine
Experts have warned that children are at risk of measles because the NHS is ‘clearly failing’ to ensure they get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and its system needs an urgent overhaul.
Calls are growing for major reform of how MMR jabs are delivered as it emerged that vaccination rates in some parts of England are now on a par with those in Afghanistan and Malawi.
Ministers are under pressure to let pharmacies start administering MMR jabs to infants so that they can supplement the immunisation programmes that GP surgeries and schools already run.
Labour MP Ben Coleman, who sits on the Health and Social Care Select Committee, said that the ‘long-term decline in uptake of MMR and growing number of very worrying measles outbreaks, like the one in Enfield (where 60 children have recently contracted measles, 15 of whom have been hospitalised, and where the MMR vaccination rate is only 64.3 per cent) show that that system is clearly failing’.
NHSE seeks external digital support as job cuts continue
NHS England has acknowledged it cannot meet key digital requirements of the 10 Year Health Plan and needs to buy in resource from the private sector.
This comes as NHSE makes efforts to shrink its workforce, including its transformation and digital directorate.
As reported by the Health Service Journal, the private sector expertise being sought will be directed at ‘a range of clinical and regulatory capabilities to support the development, and assist with the assurance, of digital products and services’. This includes the ‘delivery of end-to-end clinical safety assurance’ of digital products, acting as ‘qualified persons’ within the regulation of medical devices, and ‘modelling’ the impact of AI.
Payroll failures leave doctors in debt, BMA claims
The British Medical Association has condemned serious NHS payroll errors, claiming that it has led to doctors being chased by debt collectors and threatened with legal action over salary overpayments.
A recent investigation found a sharp rise in cases where NHS trusts referred staff to collection agencies and bailiffs, sometimes even after doctors had tried to report the mistakes themselves.
The BMA says that these failures are causing significant stress and is urging NHS bodies to fix the system urgently so that doctors are not punished for administrative errors.
Some GPs threaten to stop offering flu jabs next winter
Some GPs have warned that they may not be able to offer flu vaccination clinics next winter as a result of rising operational costs.
Doctors have written to Professor Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, to express concern about ‘static’ pay given to GPs offering the service.
The British Medical Association (BMA) confirmed some GP practices have already indicated that they do not intend to sign up for the flu programme next winter.
The union’s GP committee for England pointed out that the payments for flu services were last uplifted in 2018/19.
UK Biobank to access GP records
UK Biobank, the world’s most comprehensive dataset of biological, health and lifestyle information, will now have access to GP medical records.
Previously, GPs had a legal liability to hand over the data of each patient, limiting access.
As of this week, NHS England now has the legal liability for UK Biobank GP records, allowing them to be linked in full.
Chief scientist of UK Biobank, Naomi Allen, said that ‘overnight, we will have information on conditions that are largely diagnosed and managed in primary care’.
Meanwhile, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Liam Smeeth, said that researchers ‘will solve so many major health challenges that affect us today, and we'll do so because of this initiative to make these data available now’.
Maternity care inequalities exposed
A new NHS England dashboard, introduced as part of the Amos review, reveals major gaps in maternity outcomes, with black women and those in the poorest areas far more likely to experience pre-term birth and postpartum haemorrhage.
The analysis highlights several outlier trusts, including Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals Foundation Trust and Warrington and Halton Hospitals Foundation Trust, where disparities are particularly severe, with some rates for black women nearly double or triple those of white women.
National data shows these inequalities persist despite government targets, prompting calls for urgent action.
Senior managers suffered 4 per cent real-terms pay cut since 2019
Senior managers have experienced sustained real-terms pay erosion since 2019, falling behind both inflation and wider earnings growth, according to the latest report for the NHS Pay Review Body.
The report also reveals that senior managers fared worse than most staff employed at other Agenda for Change bands over that period.
Most notably, those designated as managers saw their earnings per head increase in cash terms by 10 percentage points more than their senior colleagues (35 per cent compared to 25 per cent) between September 2019 and October 2025.
Senior managers saw average earnings rise 25 per cent in cash terms to £99,282 between 2019 and 2025, according to the NPRB. Over the same period, consumer price index inflation increased by 29 per cent.
New technology and medicines to combat drug and alcohol addiction
Innovators across the UK are being offered £20 million of government funding to develop cutting‑edge medicines, medical technologies and digital tools to tackle drug and alcohol addiction.
Thousands of people die every year from substance misuse and addiction, with hundreds of thousands more suffering.
Grants, delivered through Innovate UK, will support the development and deployment of new technologies designed to improve treatment, strengthen recovery and reduce harm from drug and alcohol addiction.
Dr Zubir Ahmed, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, said: “Finding new ways to combat the scourge of addiction could save thousands of lives and billions of pounds.”
