Annie Grey reports on the Government’s proposed ‘pay rise’ for health workers in the midst of the pandemic.
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona
Everyday, NHS staff across the UK are putting their health and wellbeing on the line to provide care in exceptionally difficult circumstances. Yet, in response to their lifesaving work over the last year, the government plans to give health workers a pay rise of 1%. The move has been met by widespread criticism from nurses and supporting unions, who branded it an insult to those who have been at the forefront of the coronavirus pandemic over the past 12 months.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), who have called for a 12.5% pay increase for nurses, said that a 1% pay rise would amount to only an extra £3.50 a week in take home pay for an experienced nurse. According to the Labour opposition, when taking into account an inflation forecast of 1.5 percent, this amounts to a pay cut in practise. Labour said the proposal goes against a government ‘promise’ made last year to give NHS workers a 2.8% pay rise.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of council at the British Medical Association, said:
“This comes as a kick in the teeth after a decade in which doctors have experienced real-term pay cuts of up to 30% and in the same week as the chancellor [Rishi Sunak] has announced a huge increase in the taxation on doctor’s pensions that will leave virtually all doctors worse off”
NHS Providers, which speaks for hospital trusts in England, said the 1% rise risked encouraging even more staff to quit the service – which will only worsen the already present staffing issues. This follows reports from 2020 that over 1,000 doctors planned to quit the NHS in the next three years due to disappointment with the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and frustrations around pay.
As RCN Chief Executive Dame Donna Kinnair, has said:
“Nursing staff would feel they are being punished and made to pay for the cost of the pandemic. It is a political decision to underfund and undervalue nursing staff”.
An industrial action fund of £35 million was immediately set up by RCN leaders, should its members wish to go on strike.
Political Failure
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, had previously hinted that NHS staff would only get a small rise next year, saying that its size should be determined by “affordability”. Mental Health Minister, Nadine Dorries, defended the offer stating that “no other public sector employee is receiving a pay rise” and that 1 percent was “the most we think we can afford”. Listing “affordability” as the reason behind the decision could be considered counterproductive, due to the sufficient amount of public funds ‘wasted’ in the last year due to government mismanagement.
It was revealed that the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, received a pay rise of at least £40,000 in the year before leaving Downing Street. The NHS Test and Trace system, run by the Conservative peer, Dido Harding, has so far received £22 billion despite being inundated with problems since it was launched on 28 May 2020. Tory donors, Randox Laboratories, were awarded a £133 million Covid-19 testing contract; subsequently, 750,000 of the test kits were ordered to be withdrawn due to safety issues. Officials paid more than £5 million in consultancy fees to companies with close links to ministers and the Conservative Party.
The government spent £364 million on contracts to produce coveralls for the NHS. The government received just over 430,000 coveralls for this cost, at £840 per unit. Rishi Sunak’s Job Retention Bonus scheme includes, by the Chancellor’s own admission, “dead weight” costs. Labour’s analysis puts the potential cost of handing this bonus to firms who would have retained staff anyway at £2.6 billion.
Hancock stated that it was “just a coincidence” that around £2 billion worth of contracts were handed by his Health Department to firms linked with Tory party members or donors. The government was found to have acted “unlawfully” by high court judges, due to a failure to be open about the awards of Covid-related contracts worth billions of pounds. Shadow Chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, claimed that the Conservatives wasted £2.3 billion on contracts that didn’t deliver throughout the course of the pandemic. This equates to the salary costs of: 41k teachers, 55k police officers, 56k firefighters, 64k nurses, and 66k social workers.
Broken Pledges
Given the proven “unlawful” acts of officials throughout the pandemic, it comes as no surprise that the government has found itself scrambling to defend a wage increase for NHS workers, which critics have described as an “insult”.
The NHS service as a whole faces future uncertainty, as NHS bosses claim the Chancellor has broken his pledge to give the NHS “whatever it takes” to fight Covid-19. This comes after Sunak did not increase the service’s core funding in the March budget. The budget failed to mention any significant additional funding for the NHS to cope with the impact of Covid-19 or ensure the sustainability of the NHS.
NHS experts say that it has been left with too little money to properly tackle the massive backlog of surgery postponed during the pandemic’s first and second waves, or to expand mental health care for the significantly increased number of people with psychological problems. Urgent action is required to rectify years of underinvestment in public health and social care.
Unison maintains that an earlier and more significant pay rise for all NHS staff is the right thing to do – and not just to thank health workers for everything they’ve given to provide care during this crisis, but to keep hardworking staff in the NHS for years to come.
The Department of Health and Social Care has submitted its proposal to the NHS pay review body, which will decide in May [2021] how much of a salary uplift the vast majority of NHS staff across the UK should get in 2021-22. However, the proposed increase has to be approved by the NHS Pay Review Body before taking effect.
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