The safest comment is that this was, in many respects, a very strange meeting.

Ruth Robinson, as delegate from London, attended on Wednesday. A number of visitors attended on Thursday, as did I (as Health Sector NAC delegate). We attended on Thursday as this day had been agreed by the last NAC meeting to be the day that would discuss Agenda for Change, and it had been agreed to open the meeting up to the maximum possible number of SLTs. In the event, several visitors reported real difficulty in obtaining details of the NAC and getting an invitation to attend.

Delegates present on Wednesday were told that Wednesday was 'the NAC meeting', that all decisions - including the London motions on Agenda for Change - had to be taken on Wednesday, and that the remaining 2 days were not the NAC but were just study days that could not take a decision on anything. The London motions were therefore taken on Wednesday evening (and delegates were kept working until after 8pm after a full day of activity). Key discussions on Agenda for Change therefore took place before the visitors had even arrived.

Ruth Robinson introduced the London motions. There were many amendments to the first London motion, but there was agreement that profiles could not be signed off before there was a set of profiles offering a career structure to all SLTs. There was no support for the second motion, which called for a ballot of SLTs before profiles were signed off.

On Thursday morning, I raised an objection that all the decision making on Agenda for Change had been got out of the way before any visitors had arrived It was stated firmly by the full time officer that the NAC had already taken place, and that the remaining two days were for general discussion only.

Half an hour later, Colin Adkins (now the union's lead negotiator on job profiles) and Gail Cartmail (the union's Head of Health) arrived. Suddenly the decision making NAC meeting that had finished the previous day started all over again, as Colin and Gail argued that job profiles should be signed off on the spot.

The entire day was dominated by sharp arguments about the best way forward. Colin introduced the argument that many speech and language therapists might get pay increases under Agenda for Change. This is completely at odds with recent admissions by the union that there will be pay cuts for SLTs, and that we are in a damage limitation situation. The pay increases were dependent on a rather large 'if'. SLTs will get pay increases if they are slotted into equivalent pay bands to their current salary, in which case they will be assimilated on the spine point that is higher than their existing salary.

To give a concrete example, I am a Senior Specialist currently on spine point 38 (salary £35,715). If I moved across onto Band 8 Range A, I would be assimilated onto the next highest spine point, which would be £36,026. If this happened, I would get a pay increase. Unfortunately, when I evaluate my own job, using the job evaluation scheme, my post comes out as a Band 6 (maximum salary £28,000). The hypothetical pay increase becomes a pay cut for many SLTs when we look at real jobs.

You may remember that I circulated a 'matching matrix' document a few weeks ago. This emerged from a meeting between College and union representatives in August, and is an attempt to match Whitley pay scales to Agenda for Change bands. (I have had differing feedback from SLTs about this document. Some people regard it as a good compromise, others are very unhappy about the pay cuts that would still apply for some SLTs).

The document was circulated in the meeting. After some minor tidying up, it was implied that the document was a factual account of what will happen under Agenda for Change. We were told that we will control the matching process so that the existing profiles will only apply to our existing Band 1 and Band 2 therapists, that we will negotiate new Band 8 profiles for Principal SLT and Consultant SLT posts, and that we will control the process so that any SLT with team leader or managerial responsibilities is covered by the generic Band 8 management profiles.

The document, however, is hypothetical in the extreme. It has most certainly not been agreed with the Department of Health! It simply reflects the discussion that took place at the College meeting in August. It is based on an arbitrary matching of one set of salaries to another set of salaries, without any basis in the job evaluation scheme. When we return to the job evaluation scheme - and this can't be ducked, as it is at the heart of Agenda for Change - our pay cuts return.

There are other problems. We are effectively being told by the union that SLTs are a special case, and that we will be given salaries that are massively out of line with those that apply to other Allied Health Professionals. For example, we are told that an OT Team Leader will get a maximum salary of £28,387 while an SLT Team Leader will supposedly get a maximum salary of £38,709. How many of us really believe that Trusts will happily agree to salary discrepancies of this magnitude?

The union is arguing that College and Amicus will put out joint guidance on how SLTs should be slotted in, and that this will enable us to control the matching process. Unfortunately, there is a growing weight of evidence from the Early Implementer sites that this process is extremely difficult to control.

The approach argued by the union also makes the assumption that we will get 2 new Band 8 job profiles - one for a Consultant SLT, and one for a Principal SLT. We will almost certainly get the Consultant profile, but Sue Hastings - now working for the DOH - has said it will apply at best to a handful of people. The Principal profile is much more hypothetical. College and the union will work together on this profile, but we don't know yet if the DOH will agree. Even if we get the profile, we still have to justify an outcome for SLTs that is very much at odds with that for other AHPs.

At a joint College-union meeting in July, the union agreed that AFC would probably lead to pay cuts for many SLTs, and we were promised a campaign for recruitment and retention premia. At last week's NAC, the pay cuts had magically disappeared, we were told that any suggestion of pay cuts was speculative and was just scaremongering, and that it was premature to do any campaigning as we would look silly if this proved unnecessary.

We were told last week that the way forward was to sign off profiles and then test them out in the Early Implementer sites. We were told that if we didn't like the outcome, then we could campaign at that stage. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be too late. All the available evidence is that the Early Implementer process will be followed by - at best - minor tweaking. There will almost certainly be no opportunity for fundamental revision of job profiles for SLTs.

Feelings ran high for the entire day on Thursday. The eventual outcome was that delegates were not prepared to sign off profiles then and there, but there was considerable pressure on delegates to agree to sign off profiles at the next meeting. It was agreed that there would be consultation in regions followed by a further NAC meeting on 18th October. It is possible that any new job profiles will be available by the meeting, as they will be discussed at a Job Evaluation Working Party on 29th to 30th September.

The NAC meeting agreed a set of standing orders on 10th September that stated clearly that visitors could attend NAC meetings. It was asserted on 11th September that visitors would not be allowed to attend the next NAC meeting.

Friday 12th September was rather less fraught, with half a day being spent on discussing a welcome pack for SLT reps.

My own view is that we are in a difficult situation. Some of the assertions made at last week's NAC were misleading and inaccurate. We are being put under a great deal of pressure to sign off job profiles that will lead to pay cuts for a significant number of our members. Pay cuts cannot be made to disappear by waving a magic wand and saying, 'They've gone'. The reality remains that Agenda for Change is an under-funded scheme. The union has always admitted that there it is under-funded by 15 to 20%. The way forward is to work with the other groups in our union who are facing pay cuts, to seek alliances with other unions and professional bodies, and to go back to the Government for more money. If Agenda for Change is not in the interests of our members, the job of the union is to oppose it.

I stress that this is my own account of the meeting and the key arguments at the meeting. Consultation in London Region will take place before the next SLT National Advisory Committee.

Gill George
Secretary, London Speech and Language Therapy Advisory Committee
16th September