Myth of the NHS pay freeze: Bosses 13% salary hike since 2009 as patients denied treatment due to cash Senior managers now earn an average of £76,000 a year Experts blame lucrative NHS scheme which awards pay rises every year to staff 'for turning up' Labour slams figures as 'proof the Tories could not be trusted with the NHS' Health bosses have seen their pay soar by 13 per cent in just four years - even though patients are being denied treatment because there is not enough cash. NHS figures published today that senior managers now earn an average of £76,000 a year, up from £66,000 in 2009/10. The pay-rises have been handed out despite a supposed pay-freeze across the public sector - and at a time when the NHS is meant to be saving billions of pounds to become more efficient. New figures have revealed doctors are enjoying pay rises while nurses and midwives salaries fall behind inflation Experts say they have come about thanks to a lucrative scheme within the NHS whereby the majority of staff are automatically given a rise every year just for showing up for work. Critics are calling for the system to be abolished and say crucial health service cash is being diverted away from treatment into the already "bloated" salaries of bureaucrats. Although the NHS budget has been ring-fenced from public sector cuts, hospitals and other organisations have been collectively ordered to make £20 billion of savings by next year. Officials want the money to be ploughed into improved care for the aging population and more advanced, but expensive, treatments for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. But faced with such strict targets, many NHS trusts have been rationing certain non-emergency treatments including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and hernia operations. Bosses have also been slashing front-line staff and separate figures show that almost 5,000 nursing posts have been lost across the health service over the past three years. Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers" Alliance said: "The health budget should be spent on patient care, not pay hikes for the already bloated NHS bureaucracy. The public sector is meant to have faced a pay freeze but clearly this hasn't been the case for NHS senior managers. "Huge sums of taxpayers" money have been pumped into the NHS, but far too much of this has been wasted on pay increases rather than on treatment and facilities." The figures reveal the average salaries for all NHS staff have risen by 8.6 per cent since 2009/10. But doctors" pay only went up by 2.2 per cent over this period compared to the 7.5 per cent rise seen in that of nurses and midwives. Dr Peter Carter, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said the figures send 'the wrong message' about the contribution of front line NHS staff Over the last 12 months the pay for senior managers - who include chief executives and heads of department - increased by three times the rate of nurses. While nurses" average salaries only increased by 0.6 per cent since 2011/12, senior managers" went up by 2.2 per cent. Dr Peter Carter, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said: "Frontline health care staff work exceptionally hard in difficult circumstances to care for patients with limited resources, and these figures will send completely the wrong message about how much their contribution is valued. It is not too much to ask that nurses and other front-line staff who do so much to keep the NHS afloat in increasingly difficult circumstances are treated the same as their management colleagues. We are hearing time and again from nurses who are struggling to keep their heads above water financially as their pay falls far behind inflation, and finding out that already well paid senior staff are enjoying these pay rises will be extremely demoralising. Experts say that about 55 per cent of all NHS staff enjoy an automatic or "incremental" pay-rise every year just for turning up. NHS Employers - the body in charge of negotiating salaries - has repeatedly called for contracts to be changed warning they are costing the health service an extra £500 million a year. A spokesman for NHS Employers said: "The NHS employs over a million people with a range of different skills. The vast majority, including managers, are on incremental scales that rise each year. The figures reflect that while there was a pay freeze in the NHS in 2012/13 so that headline pay did not increase, almost two thirds of all NHS staff on national pay scales would have received incremental pay progression within their salary band. Labour seized on the figures as proof that the Tories could not be trusted with the NHS. Jamie Reed MP, the party's shadow health minister, said: "David Cameron is giving NHS managers cushy pay rises and pay-offs, whilst nurses get pay freezes or P45s. He stands up for the wrong people and proves you can't trust the Tories with the NHS. Earlier this week MPs from the health select committee called for hospitals to publish figures on the numbers of nurses working each night amid concerns of staffing shortages. And research by Kings College London published this week found that 43 per cent of NHS wards have too few nurses.