‘Kick in the teeth’ for NHS
pharmafile | October 7, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Hunt, NHS, burnham
The UK Labour party has hit back at a government move to scrap a 1% pay rise for more than a million NHS staff in England, calling it a ‘kick in the teeth’.
In written evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB), the Department of Health suggests the rise should be withheld for 1.3 million workers in 2014 because it is ‘unaffordable’.
The money should instead be used to ‘modernise’ NHS pay structures, which already include payments for things like length of service. The NHSPRB is due to publish its recommendations early next year.
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the 1% award should go ahead: “To take it away, to break that promise, is just another kick in the teeth,” he claimed in an interview with the BBC.
Burnham criticised what he called health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s ‘undermining’ of NHS staff. “Morale is already at rockbottom in the NHS,” Burnham said. “And I think now it goes into a very difficult and dangerous winter with NHS staff really, utterly demoralised by the behaviour of this secretary of state.”
The Labour MP believes that cutting the 1% pay rise would be further evidence of what he calls the government’s ‘wrong priorities’, demonstrated by the controversial reforms brought about under the Health and Social Care Act.
“They have spent millions of pounds on this back office reorganisation,” Burnham went on. “They have wasted money, they have taken money out of the NHS front line.”
Taking up this theme, Rachel Maskell of the Unite trade union, said the DH’s stance was ‘not about affordability’: “£3 billion has just been spent on a reorganisation nobody wants, with not a penny going into patient care,” she said.
“The reality is that staff on the front line, for some this pay increase of 1% would just mean an extra £10 a month into their pocket, hardly keeping up with inflation,” she told Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Staff do deserve this pay award as they’re holding the NHS together at this very difficult time and therefore 1% is really a miserly increase into their wages,” she concluded.
However, the government believes that pay restraint is vital.
“What this is about is trying to make sure we have a modern and fit for purpose system of pay for the NHS which quite properly rewards people who improve their skills and performance,” insisted health minister Anna Soubry.
It is important to introduce a system of remuneration that is similar to the one faced by teachers, police and private sector businesses, she added.
“So it’s about negotiating, working with the unions, so we get a modern, effective pay settlement and one that is sustainable,” Soubry concluded.
Adam Hill
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