Rishi Sunak hopes the split between health unions will allow the government to settle a long-running dispute over NHS wages next month, with new figures on Monday revealing the massive disruption caused by strikes.
About 195,000 NHS appointments, including hospital operations and check-ups, were canceled last week in England due to four days of industry strike by junior doctors.
The prime minister admitted strikes could make it “more difficult” to deliver on his promise to cut waiting lists for NHS treatment.
Ending the NHS wage dispute is crucial for Sunak, with polls showing the public continues to support striking nurses and the state of the health service will be a major issue in the next general election.
The prime minister is facing the biggest wave of strikes in the public and private sectors in decades, as workers demand higher wages amid a cost-of-living crisis.
While the pay dispute with junior doctors seems intractable, Snack hopes a wage deal can soon be reached with about a million other health workers covered by so-called shift contracts, including nurses, ambulance staff and porters.
On Monday he insisted a 5 per cent wage increase for 2023-24 and a one-time payment for last year was “reasonable”, and Downing Street said it was the “final” offer.
Last week, members of the Royal College of Nursing rejected the offer, despite it being recommended by the union leadership – throwing Sunak’s efforts to end months of public-sector industrial strike into disarray.
The prime minister’s allies have estimated that if NHS workers accept the wage deal, there will be a snowball effect, with pressure mounting on public sector employees in other regions to end their strikes.
Senior government insiders said Monday that they are “hopeful” that RCN’s rejection of the offer will be overcome next month if members of other large health federations vote to support it.
A final ruling on the wage deal will not become clear until a meeting of the NHS Staff Council on 2 May, a body that could decide to accept the offer despite resistance from RCN members. The body represents unions or employee associations whose members include Change Agenda Contracts.
Ten of those were consulting with members about whether to accept a wage deal, with most polls closed by the end of April. The council operates an electoral college type system, with the larger unions holding more weight.
Unison, whose members decisively accepted the offer last week, received the most votes, raising the possibility that the deal would be approved, provided it was backed by a number of other large unions – notably GMB.
“It all depends on what GMB does,” said a government insider.
The GMB leadership has recommended the wage deal and is currently electing its own members.
The union will get the result of the vote on April 28, and GMB insiders said the result is likely to be “very close.”
If the NHS Staff Council accepts the latest wage deal, the precedent suggests the government will simply impose it on RCN members and any other unions that rejected it.
In 2018, for example, another payment offer for NHS workers had the backing of every union on the council except the GMB. Its members ended up forcing the settlement on them.
In such a situation, the RCN would have to decide whether to continue with the strikes in the hope of getting a better offer.
After its members rejected the offer last week, the union leadership announced a 48-hour strike starting April 30.
Sunak tried to downplay the RCN vote, noting that only 54 percent of union members voted to reject the wage offer on a turnout of 61 percent.
“When you look at the turnout, it’s a minority of the members of that union who vote to strike,” he said.
But according to a YouGov poll, the public continues to support striking nurses. The research firm’s latest poll showed that 67 percent of people supported the strikes.
NHS sensitivity is highlighted in separate YouGov poll It shows that voters made health their second biggest issue, after the economy and before immigration and asylum.
Despite the political pressure to iron out differences over wages, Sunak and his adviser Jeremy Hunt have argued that the main priority this year is squeezing inflation, which he blames on the wave of strikes.
Speaking in Washington last week, Hunt said core inflation of more than 6 percent is “directly linked to higher wages.”
He added, “The worst thing we could do to young doctors and nurses…or anyone who runs the economy in such a way that they have to worry about 10 percent inflation in a year.” Consumer price inflation held steady at 10.4 percent in February.
But the strike in the public sector – including those of employees and teachers – has added to the atmosphere of chaos at a time when the prime minister is trying to inject an atmosphere of administrative efficiency after the unrest of his predecessors.
Voters will have their first opportunity to make a judgment on Sunak’s performance on May 4 in local elections in England.
Greg Hands, the Conservative Party chairman, tried to manage expectations by warning the Conservatives of a potential loss of 1,000 seats.