An NHS payment deal for one million staff has been signed

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Nick Triggle, Health Correspondent, May 2, 2023, 14:06 GMT

Updated 1 hour ago

More than a million NHS staff in England are set to get a 5% pay rise, after health unions backed the deal.

Staff, including ambulance workers, nurses, a doctor and porters, will receive a minimum one-off payment of £1,655.

The wage deal was signed at a meeting between the government and 14 health unions representing all NHS staff except doctors and dentists.

Ministers have said it is time to end the strikes – but three unions threaten to continue working.

However, only one – Unite – has a strike mandate and is reserved for local strikes in some ambulance services and a few hospitals.

‘Lost’

Uniformed Health chief Sarah Gorton, who chairs the joint NHS union group, said: “NHS workers will now want the wage increase they voted to accept.

“The hope is that the one-time payment and salary increase will be in the June pay packages.”

But Ms Gorton said health workers should not have been on strike of this magnitude – nurses, physiotherapists and ambulance staff have been on strike since December.

“Talks about adequate pay last fall could have prevented health workers from losing money they could not afford to lose,” she said.

“The NHS and patients would also have saved months of disruption.”

“fair result”

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said he was pleased unions had accepted the offer, which was proposed in March, after members voted on it.

“When some unions choose to remain in a dispute, we hope their members – many of whom have voted to accept this offer – will realize that this is a fair outcome that has the support of their colleagues and decide that it is time for a lawsuit to end.

“We will continue to engage constructively with unions on workforce changes to ensure the NHS is the best place to work for staff, patients and taxpayers.”

Although some unions rejected the offer, the deal was agreed after a majority backed it as a result of the support of some of the largest unions in the NHS, such as Unison, GMB and those representing physiotherapists and midwives.

All employees will now receive the additional salary.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), one of the unions that rejected the offer, warned it would continue to pursue the strike.

But she needs to hold another ballot of her members, as her six-month mandate expired at the end of Monday, when her last withdrawal ended.

Image source, Getty Images

RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said the union would begin voting in the coming weeks.

In a letter to Mr Barclay, she said that while she “fully respected” the other unions that had voted to accept it, she would continue to fight for their members, who had voted to reject the offer despite the RCN leadership recommending it to them.

She added: “Nursing is the largest part of the NHS workforce and they need an offer that matches their true value.”

Unlike last time, RCN is conducting a national poll rather than a series of local workplaces.

That means it will be hard to win a strike mandate – something called an “all or nothing” approach, in a last-ditch effort to persuade ministers to return to the negotiating table.

payment claim

The health secretary also met the British Medical Association on Tuesday to see if the two sides could agree on a way forward in the row over junior doctors’ salaries.

They are on a different contract so are not affected by the agreement reached with other NHS staff.

The Bahrain Monetary Agency wants a 35% increase to offset 15 years of below-inflation wage increases.

Junior doctors have carried out two strikes so far. Mr Barclay said the demand for wages was unsustainable.

A government spokesperson said the discussion was “constructive” and the two sides would meet again in the coming days.

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