This year, our central recommendations for 2016-17 are for (i) an increase in basic pay of 1 per cent to the national salary scales for salaried doctors and dentists for all countries of the UK; and (ii) an increase, of 1 per cent in pay, net of expenses, for independent contractor general medical practitioners (GMPs) and general dental practitioners (GDPs) for all countries of the UK. We have reached these conclusions following detailed consideration of all of the written and oral evidence we have received from the parties, as well as taking into account our own analysis, covering all aspects of our remits. In addition, we have concluded that we should not target our recommendations for 2016-17 on the basis of recruitment and retention. Issues do exist in some specialties and locations and unless the parties provide evidence that other approaches are working, we think that there could be merit in testing a targeted pay approach in future years to see whether that was more effective. We also note that funds set aside for the pay uplift could be used differently to alleviate workload pressures.