Performance related pay for Bands 8c (and above) comes in 01 April 2013.
Realistically, the government will look at ways of reducing the wage bill of the Public Sector. In line with initiatives such as "best value" it is not inconceivable that the next step would be to stop the automatic advancement within other pay bands unless benchmark performance is achieved and maintained.
This routinely happens in the private sector.
Those who perform their duties reap the rewards, those who don’t will not advance any further, (makes sense to me).
The only question will be how the performance targets are set, and monitored, this will have to be on a local level. Any local biomed management should be doing this routinely, in any case.
The conscientious and industrious biomed (in the NHS or private sector) should have nothing to worry about!
