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The prime minister has championed a proposed 1% pay increase for NHS staff.
“What we have done is try to give them everything we can at the present time”, Boris johnson said during a visit to a COVID-19 vaccination center in North London.
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“The independent salary review body will obviously look at what we have proposed and will come back.
“Do not forget that there has been a wage freeze in the public sector, we are in quite difficult times.
“We have tried to give the NHS as much as we could and that means that, in addition to the £ 140 billion of money annually, we have another £ 62 billion that we have found to help support the NHS during the crisis.”
The prime minister added that he is “enormously grateful” to NHS staff and social care workers, describing their efforts during the pandemic as “heroic.”
But the proposal has sparked a backlash, with critics calling it “dismissive” after a year on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.
Unions have raised the possibility of industrial action.
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Nandy: ‘Government must respect 2.1% NHS wage increase enshrined in law’
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which has called for a 12.5% pay increase for nurses, said a 1% pay increase would equate to just an additional £ 3.50 a week in pay taken. home to an experienced nurse.
Inflation is currently at 0.9%, but other unions pointed to a predicted inflation of 1.5% this year to claim that a 1% pay increase for NHS staff would actually amount to a real pay cut.
In an emergency meeting on Friday, RCN leaders voted to immediately establish a £ 35 million industrial action fund if its members wish to go on strike.
Labor’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy told Sky News that it was “reprehensible” that the government did not recommend a larger increase.
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NHS payment offer ‘a kick in the teeth’
Speaking to Sophy Ridge on Sunday, he said: “The government, to be clear, is not planning a pay increase.
“That’s a pay cut in real terms because it doesn’t keep up with inflation and for nurses being offered a pay cut is simply reprehensible in our opinion.”
She said ministers should offer a 2.1% increase as a “bare minimum,” the percentage that NHS providers claim was contained in the NHS long-term spending plan announced in 2018.
