Nurses REJECT pay supply as Chancellor boasts about ending strikes
Rachel Reeves was left embarrassed today after nurses rejected a new pay award – at the same time as the Chancellor boasted about ending public sector strikes.
Mid-way through Ms Reeves’ speech to Labour’s conference in Liverpool, the Royal College of Nursing announced they were refusing to accept the Government’s offer.
The union said two-thirds of members had voted against a 5.5 per cent pay increase for this year, which ministers had hoped would settle a long-running row.
The RCN, which staged a series of disruptive strikes as part of the dispute, said there had been ‘a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves’.
Their rejection of the Government’s pay award came as Ms Reeves addressed Labour members at the party’s conference for the first time as Chancellor, in a speech that was disrupted by a Gaza protester.
Rachel Reeves was left embarrassed today after nurses rejected a new pay award – at the same time as the Chancellor boasted about ending public sector strikes
NHS workers are pictured on a picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London last year during their strike action over pay
During her conference speech, Ms Reeves hailed how she had acted to end widespread industrial action by announcing a series of salary hikes within weeks of Labour winning power
During her speech, she hailed how she had acted to end widespread industrial action by announcing a series of salary hikes within weeks of Labour winning power.
Ms Reeves said: ‘I am proud to stand here as the first Chancellor in 14 years to have delivered a meaningful, real pay rise to millions of public sector workers.
‘We made that choice. We made that choice not just because public sector workers needed that pay rise.
‘But because it was the right choice for parents, patients and for the British public.
‘The right choice for recruitment and retention. And it was the right choice for our country.’
The Chancellor also dismissed Tory criticism of Labour’s public sector pay rises – at the same time as claiming a £22billion ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances – by saying she would relish ‘a fight’ with the Conservatives.
‘If the Conservative Party, if they want a fight about this,’ she added. ‘If they want to argue we should have ignored the independent pay review bodies.
‘That public sector workers’ pay should fall further behind the cost of living. That ordinary families should pay the price of industrial action.
‘If the Conservatives Party want a fight about who can be trusted to make the right choices for our public services and those who use them. Then I say bring it on.’
Ms Reeves announced she had approved a 5.5 per cent pay rise for nurses and other NHS workers in England on 29 July.
But the RCN today revealed, following a vote of 145,000 members, that nurses had rejected the Government’s offer.
In a letter to the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the union’s general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said: ‘We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves, their patients and the NHS they believe in.’
She added: ‘To raise standards and reform the NHS, you need safe numbers of nursing staff and they need to feel valued.
‘Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start.
‘This outcome shows their expectations of Government are far higher.
‘Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments.
‘Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades – they need to see that the Government’s reform agenda will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.’
