News

NHS pay: nurses in bid to pile pre-Budget pressure on Chancellor

Staff on AfC terms use social media campaign to demand inflation-busting deal
Image from RCN’s #FairPayForNurses social media campaign day

Nurses on Agenda for Change contracts demand inflation-busting deal as Rishi Sunak finalises Budget

Image from RCN’s #FairPayForNursing social media campaign day
An image from the RCN’s social media campaign

Nurses have renewed their calls for a significant pay rise ahead of the UK government’s budget.

Using the #FairPayForNursing hashtag, NHS nurses took to social media to urge chancellor Rishi Sunak to take the opportunity of his 3 March budget to boost central NHS funding for the explicit purpose of increasing staff pay.

The social media campaign day was organised by the RCN, which has warned of an exodus of nurses from the health service if what it sees as a meaningful pay rise is not secured for the 2021-22 pay round.

NHS Pay Review Body to report to ministers in May

While the government has already committed to giving NHS nurses a pay rise – Mr Sunak said last November staff would receive one – the profession will have to wait until at least the summer to find out what this might be.

The NHS Pay Review Body, which advises the government on pay for the NHS’s Agenda for Change workforce, has been asked to report back with its recommendations in early May.

‘A 12.5% pay rise is well in excess of being realistic and certainly one for the fairies’

Karl McCartney, Conservative MP for Lincoln

RCN general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair said: ‘Nursing staff are exhausted and morale is low.

‘The government must act now to prevent an exodus from the profession once the pandemic is over.’

Nurses in NHS need pay deal that claws back value eroded by inflation – RCN

The RCN argues nurses on Agenda for Change contracts have, in real terms, experienced an up to 15.3% pay cut over the past decade, because their pay has not kept pace with inflation.

However, its call for a 12.5% pay rise has been described as ‘for the fairies’ by one MP.

‘That is a union doing the best for their members and you can’t blame them,’ Conservative MP for Lincoln Karl McCartney told the BBC’s Politics North programme on 28 February.

‘12.5% is well in excess of being realistic and that is certainly one for the fairies.’

Also appearing on the programme was Labour MP for Halifax Holly Lynch, who warned there were ‘consequences of not giving nurses a pay rise’.


In other news


Jobs