The UK government will implement a pay deal for NHS England workers in the face of continued opposition from the main nursing union after it was accepted by a majority of staff representatives.
Several NHS unions voted on Tuesday to accept the government’s offer, which gives staff a one-off payment of up to £3,789 for 2022-23 and a 5 per cent pay increase for 2023-24.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay said the vote in the NHS Staff Council, a body that brings together unions and employers with the government, showed that “a majority of NHS staff agree this is a fair and reasonable deal”.
He urged the union members who rejected the offer to “recognize this as a fair result… and it was decided that the time had come to end the industrial strike”.
Ministers see the vote as an important step towards resolving a series of pay disputes that have led to strikes across the public sector over the past year, adding to severe pressures on health services, closing schools and disrupting travel, while adding to the post-pandemic administrative backlog. .
However, the government is still far from repairing relations, even with unions that have accepted a wage deal. Meanwhile, it faces the threat of further strikes by nurses and other NHS workers whose unions have rejected the deal, as well as by doctors caught in separate disputes over pay.
“This wage deal should be the start of something new for the NHS,” said Sarah Gorton, chair of the NHS Staff Council’s union group, adding that the service remained “severely short” of staff and resources.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, speaking on behalf of the health organisations, recognized the implementation of the wage deal had been “extremely positive”.
But Taylor added that it was “not the line in the sand” that would allow the health service to “move confidently away from the threat of future strikes, or from the underlying issues affecting the NHS”.
The Royal College of Nursing, whose last work in hospitals across England ended on Monday, must hold a new ballot to renew its six-month strike mandate.
Pat Cullen, the RCN’s general secretary, wrote to Barclay on Tuesday saying the union would vote 280,000 members seeking a mandate “across the whole NHS”, having previously been able to strike about half of NHS trusts and employers.
Unite, whose NHS members also voted to reject the wage deal, said it intends to step up strikes at NHS polls where it already has a mandate, with new polls opened for “NHS workers who want to take a stand”.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon Barclay met with the British Medical Association to try to break the deadlock over junior doctors’ salaries. The British Medical Association, whose members junior doctors staged a four-day strike last month, said senior consultants may soon join their junior colleagues in taking action if the government does not offer them a better pay offer.
It is also preparing for a general practitioners ballot over a potential strike after the government imposed new contract terms that the Bahrain Monetary Agency last week described as “unsafe” and “insulting”.
A government spokesperson said following Tuesday’s meeting: “The government and the BMA Junior Doctors Committee held a constructive discussion this afternoon, in preparation for talks aimed at resolving the current disagreement between junior doctors.” The two parties will meet again in the coming days.
“The NHS is not out of the woods yet,” said Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents health service leaders.
He said the NHS needed to see “a firm commitment from the government” that the wages deal would be fully funded, along with a fully funded and completed long-term plan to tackle chronic staff shortages and other problems such as burnout.
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