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NHS medics could be handed a three per cent pay rise as early as this week as ministers attempt to see off discontent over a far smaller offer.
There has been widespread condemnation of the original one per cent offer, which critics said would be wiped out by inflation and insult those at the forefront of the medical fight against Covid.
Now that offer is set to be increased, with an announcement expected before Parliament rises for its summer recess on Thursday.
However, it remains to be seen if the deal will be enough to see off a threat of strike action from surgeons and senior doctors.
At the start of July the British Medical Association advised ‘exhausted and demoralised’ members to take industrial action if the annual pay bump is not increased to at least five per cent.
The Royal College of Nursing called for a 12.5 per cent rise.
There has been widespread condemnation of the original one per cent offer, which critics said would be wiped out by inflation and insult those at the forefront of the medical fight against Covid.
Now that offer is set to be increased, with an announcement expected before Parliament rises for its summer recess on Thursday.
Both Politico and the Nursing Times said an announcement was due to be made this week. Downing Street declined to comment this afternoon.
If staff were to get a three per cent rise, it might look low against the current rate of wage increases.
Figures released by the Office for National Statistics earlier this month showed that growth in average total pay (including bonuses) was 7.3 per cent and regular pay (excluding bonuses) was 6.6 per cent.
However it acknowledged that the figure was being inflated by job prevention measures including the furlough over the past 16 months.
Because many workers were being paid not to work or had their hours drastically reduced, last year’s figures slumped massively.
But it means that as the economy opened up this year there was a counteracting increase as workplaces opened up again.
Viewed through this prism a three per cent pay increase may be seen as more generous as it might initially appear.
Striking would involve stopping all overtime, paid and unpaid. Doctors generally work up to 20 per cent over their contracted hours every week, the BMA said at the start of July.
However the move could be highly disruptive as the NHS tries to clear record backlogs triggered by the pandemic and the threat came before the current spike in Covid cases.
A record 5.12million people are on waiting lists in England for routine care, the highest since records began. Among them, 65,000 have been waiting for more than 18 months.
In March, then health secretary Matt Hancock infuriated NHS staff by claiming the 1 per cent pay offer for frontline staff was ‘fair’ and insisted no-one cares about nurses more than him.
He told the Downing Street press conference the offer, which medics have described as a ‘slap in the face’, was based on ‘affordability’ and that the pandemic had brought ‘financial consequences’.
Mr Hancock – who promised last year he would ‘fight’ to ensure the NHS was given a ‘reward’ in the aftermath of the pandemic – claimed he ‘bowed to no-one in his admiration’ for nurses, adding: ‘I learnt that at the knee of my grandmother who was a nurse.’
Source: Daily Mail
