NHS nurses can expect an announcement on their pay later this month, according to the new chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves.
Her comments come amid rumours that the independent pay review body – which makes recommendations on NHS pay to the government – will suggest a rise of 5.5% for NHS staff, above what the previous government had budgeted for.
During the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, Ms Reeves said the government was ‘looking at those pay review body recommendations, doing the analysis, and we will work with public sector workers on that’.
She said announcements on public sector worker pay would then come later this month.
Ms Reeves recognised there was ‘a cost to not settling’ on the pay review body’s recommendation.
‘A cost of further industrial action, a cost in terms of the challenge that we face in recruiting and retaining doctors, and nurses, and teachers as well,’ she said.
‘But we will do it in a proper way and make sure that the sums add up.’
The institute for fiscal studies (IFS), the UK’s leading economic research institute, speculated in the Sunday Telegraph that paying an extra 5.5% to nurses and teachers would cost £5.5bn, increasing to around £10bn if the same increase was given to all public sector staff.
A government spokesperson said: ‘We value the vital contribution the almost six million public sector workers make to our country.
‘The pay review process is ongoing, and no final decisions have been made. We will update in due course; however we are under no illusions about the scale of the fiscal inheritance we face.’
Responding to the chancellor’s comments a spokesperson for the Royal College of Nursing said: ‘The pay award must be fair and begin to turn around a broken NHS. We will always give nursing staff a vote on whether they accept it.’
