The 1% Problem

In one speech in Parliament, Jeremy Hunt scrapped the hated 1% cap on NHS staff’s pay rises (1), the cap that saw staff’s pay cut in reality. With one speech the seven year old pay cap was gone.

As nurses, this is what we wanted to happen, this is what we have campaigned for (2), we have even threaten industrial action for it (3), but this really a victory?

When Hunt was questioned by MPs, he wouldn’t say what pay rise NHS staff could expect, he wouldn’t say if he’d got the Treasury to fund a pay rise, but he did say that any pay rise would be linked to “productivity” (4).

Only a few months ago, Chancellor Philip Hammond was reported as saying, at a cabinet meeting, that public sector staff are overpaid, being paid 10% above their private sector equivalents (5). Now this is not true and is a distortion of the facts (6), which is unsettling enough for our Chancellor of the Exchequer to do, but it does show Philip Hammond’s attitude towards NHS staff’s pay. In his last budget he provided no increase to NHS funding (7).

A decent pay rise for nurses is urgently needed, and not just as a selfish pat on the back. The NHS is haemorrhaging nurses. There are 40,000 full-time equivalent empty nursing posts in the NHS, 1 in 9 of all nursing posts (8), Janet Davies (General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing) directly linked these empty posts to low pay and high workloads forcing nurses to leave the NHS (9). Since the pay cap was started in 2010, nurses’ pay has fallen in real times by 14% (10), which equates to nurses being at least £3,000 worse off each year (11). Fourteen unions, including the RCN and Union, have called for NHS staff to receive a 3.9% pay rise (12), which only seems fair to me.

In his announcement, Hunt did talk about any pay rise being linked to “productivity”(4), which is unbelievably arrogant. The NHS would be in a far worse state if it wasn’t for the dedication for its staff. This year we’ve seen NHS staff, and especially nurses, going above and beyond their roles when faced with the aftermath of terrorist attacks and disasters; the Finsbury Park mosque attack (13), the Grenfell Tower fire (14), the Manchester Arena bombing (15), Royal Stoke University Hospital fire (16), and the Westminster Bridge and London Bridge attacks (17). But it isn’t just the nurses responding to national disasters, like so many other NHS staff, its the extra work that nurses provide on a day-to-day basis that is holding the NHS together. This isn’t just my opinion, Sir Robert Francis QC, the chair of the investigation into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust scandal, earlier this year said the NHS was only being held together by the “superhuman effects” of its staff (18).

But I think Hunt’s reference to “productivity” is something different. During his speech to the Conservative Party Conference, Hunt announced that he wants to pilot an app whereby staff can be called in to fill shifts at a short notice (19). Sound familiar? He wants to introduce an Uber like app were staff will only work when they are needed or staff will be called in to work on their days off. Is this how we want to work and is this safe for patients? I wouldn’t want to be looked after by a nurse dragged into work on their day off. But I fear accepting this app maybe a condition of receiving a pay rise next year.

There is also the question, who will fund any pay rise we’re offered next year. Neither Hunt or Philip Hammond have announced any extra funding for the NHS, and Hammond’s attitude shows he’s unlikely to do so (5). NHS Trusts cannot afford to fund any pay rise. Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, told the Commons cross-party health select committee, after Hunt announced he’d scrapped the cap, that the Government will need to increase the NHS’s funding to met any pay rise because Trusts’ funding is far too stressed to do so (20). I suspect that we will get a pay rise and then Hunt will announce that we will only receive it if there are substantial cuts to fund it. This is an approach he’s used before.

At the beginning of the year, during a speech, Hunt said he wanted to increase staff’s pay but he “couldn’t” because that would take money away from recruiting more doctors and nurses (21). In 2014 Hunt vetoed a 1% pay rise for nurses, saying that to fund it would mean losing 15,000 nurses from the NHS (22). This was an out-and-out lie. After industrial attack, Hunt backed down and we were awarded a mere 1% rise (23), and strangely enough no nurses were sacked to fund it.

(The Government found £1.5 billion to fund their deal with the DUP, to secure the DUP’s support in parliament (24). A 1% pay rise for all NHS staff would cost £500 million (25). Therefore the £1.5 billion found very quickly to fund the DUP would fund a 3% pay rise for all NHS staff. Says a lot about this Government’s priorities)

I fear that Jeremy Hunt’s announcement that the cap has been scrapped is nothing more than spin. The Government needed some good news and so Hunt’s announcement, without any funding or guarantees behind it. I fear that the wage cap has only been replaced by spin, emotional blackmail and demands for us to work even more unrealistically harder. With Hunt still in charge, I’d be very surprised to get a pay rise next year above 1%, and certainly not one without a lot of strings attached.

Drew Payne

Their Lips are Moving But I Don’t Believe a Word That They Say...

My mother used to say that you could always tell when a politician was lying because their lips would be moving. Even as a child that did not always ring true with me, there are good MPs, people who care and who want to change things for the better… Now I am not so sure, well certainly not about the MPs in our governing party.

This government has capped public sector pay rises at 1% since 2010, it began with a two year pay freeze (1). This was part of their policy to reduce our country’s deficit, what has become known as austerity, not an unfair name. But this policy, the pay cap, has hit NHS staff hard. By 2014, only four years into this policy, NHS staff’s pay had risen only half as much as the rate of inflation, 2010 to 2014 inflation rose by 12% where NHS staff’s pay only rose by 6% (2). Since 2010 nurses’ pay has fallen, in real terms, by 14% (3). This pay cap is not only unpopular, it has also had a severe effect on the nursing workforce. 10% of NHS nursing posts are vacant (4), and at the beginning of July it was announced that more nurses were leaving the profession than were joining it (5). The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), the registration body for nursing, revealed that in the year to March the number of registered nurses fell by 1,783. The more nurses we lose the more patient care is affected, nurses are the glue of healthcare.

Now nurses aren’t just leaving nursing because of our stagnating pay, but it is a huge factor in the poor working conditions facing us.

After this year’s General Election (The election no one wanted) many leading Conservative politicians stepped forward and said the pay cap was unfair. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was reported as supporting the idea of public-sector workers getting a better pay deal (6). Michael Gove said independent pay review bodies should make the decision on pay (7). Sir Oliver Letwin supported a limited rise in taxes to support scrapping the cap (8). Tory MP and former nurse Maria Caulfield said NHS staff "will vote with their feet" unless pay is tackled (8). Even Jeremy Hunt hinted at scrapping nurses’ pay cap (9), he said “I have a great deal of sympathy for the case that nurses amongst others have made on the issue of pay.”

With all this support in the Conservative party it should have been easy to scrap the pay cap, but it seems that politicians say one thing in front of the media and do another thing in a parliamentary vote. The Labour Party introduced an amendment to the Government’s Queen Speech (The Bill were the Government lays out their plans for the next parliament) to scrap the public sector pay cap (10). The Conservatives, in a deal with the DUP, defeated this amendment by 323 votes to 309 (11), a very slim majority. But Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin all voted against the amendment. Three Conservatives MPs who were all former nurses voted against it (12), Anne Milton, Nadine Dorries and Maria Cauldfield, who had previously spoken out against the cap (8). When they won the vote Conservative MPs cheered (13), the shear tastelessness of which is breath-taking. They had just voted to cut our wages in real terms and then they cheered themselves.

The Government has now stated that the pay cap is here to stay (14), condemning millions of public sector employees to seeing their pay falling in real terms. In the same period MPs have not seen their own pay rises capped, in 2015 they received an inflation busting 10% pay rise (15). Inflation continues to rise but our wages don’t. Prices continue to rise, rent and mortgages continue to rise, food, fuel and the internet all continue to rise in price and yet our wages don’t. Soon no one is going to want to work in the public sector.

At the height of her campaigning during the General Election, Theresa May appeared on BBC Question Time. A woman in the audience, a nurse, challenged her over the pay cap. To justify it, May replied, “There isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provide for everything that people want.” (16) But this was a lie.

Faced with a hung parliament, Theresa May formed a deal with the DUP for their ten votes to support her Government in their key votes. The price of this deal is £1.5 billion in extra funding for Northern Ireland (17). This £1.5 billion would fund a pay rise of 3% for all NHS staff. A pay rise of 1% for NHS staff would cost £500 million (18), therefore a 3% rise would cost £1.5 billion. And this deal with the DUP isn’t to support the Government in all votes, just key votes. Nice work if you can get it.

As for Theresa May’s claim that there’s no “magic money tree” is a lie. She can quickly find £1.5 billion to prop up her failing Government, a hung parliament she caused, but she can’t find money to relieve the hardship of so many public sector workers. And she doesn’t need a “magic money tree”, she can simply raise taxes, she has the power to do that. 48% of the British population would support rises taxes to ease austerity, this year’s British Social Attitudes Survey found (19).

After treatment like this how can I trust anything this Government does? Whose interests do they have at heart, not those of the vast majority of the people who make up this country? I am sickened, my Government is morally bankrupt.

Drew Payne