UK offers nurses 5% pay rise in bid to end most NHS strikes

BLOOMBERG

The UK government offered a 5% pay rise to nurses, midwives and ambulance workers in England for the next financial year, in a bid to end months of strikes.
The proposal for National Health Service (NHS) workers includes a one-time bonus worth 2% of salary for 2022-23, along with an “NHS backlog bonus” worth at least £1,250 per person, the Department of Health and Social Care said in an emailed statement.
Trade unions including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison and GMB will recommend the offer to their members in consultations to be held in the coming weeks. The Unite union said it could not recommend the offer, but would let members decide. Strike action will continue to be paused during talks with members.
Ministers are trying to draw a line under months of damaging industrial action in the NHS which has seen close to 150,000 appointments cancelled so far. An agreement with health workers would be a major boost for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government after months of industrial action across the NHS, schools and railways, ahead of a general election expected next year.
But the new pay offer raised questions over government funding, and whether the deal would result in a spending squeeze for the NHS at a time of crisis. “There must be a risk that the NHS is asked to make heroic efficiency savings to absorb these costs, struggles to do so, and instead has to be bailed out in 6 months or a year’s time,” Ben Zaranko, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said.
The plans relate to around one million staff on the so-called “Agenda for Change” contract, which covers nurses, ambulance workers, midwives, physiotherapists, porters, cleaners and other workers. Doctors were not involved in the talks as they are on different pay contracts.
“I’m really pleased that after several weeks of constructive talks, the government and the Agenda for Change unions have come to an agreement that will provide a fair deal for NHS staff and put disruptive strike action behind us,” Sunak said in an emailed statement.
Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT transport union, said earlier that resolving a dispute in the NHS could “set the tone for settlements in other sectors.”
Train services were disrupted across the country, in a week in which junior doctors, teachers, civil servants and London Underground workers also walked out in protests over pay.
In its statement, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the package would see a newly qualified nurse’s salary go up by more than £2,750 from 2021-22 to 2023-24. On top of this they would also receive over £1,890 in one-off payments this year, the department said.
Before the offer of a 5% pay rise for next year, DHSC had only publicly recommended a 3.5% increase. “The government was forced into these negotiations and to reopen the pay award as a result of the historic pressure from nursing staff,” RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said in an emailed statement. “Members took the hardest of decisions to go on strike and I believe they have been vindicated today.”