‘Nurses deserve better than pitiful pay rise’

By Amit Roy

NO DOUBT like millions across Britain, I was disgusted when I heard that nurses were being offered a one per cent pay rise.

I remembered the case of the critical care nurse, Dawn Bilbrough, who emerged ex­hausted from a 48-hour shift a year ago to find supermarket shelves had been stripped bare by panic buying. She posted a tearful video urging selfish people to leave fresh food for nurses like her: “You just need to stop it be­cause it’s people like me that are going to be looking after you when you are at your lowest, so just stop it. Please.”

Health secretary Matt Hancock said at the time: “I stand with Dawn. I think she has put it better than anybody else could.”

He now makes excuses for the pitiful offer: “We’ve proposed what we think is affordable to make sure in the NHS people do get a pay rise.”

Many nurses caught Covid and some suc­cumbed to the virus.

Has prime minister Boris Johnson forgotten that when his life hung in the balance at Lon­don’s St Thomas’ Hospital, nurses kept watch on him through the night?

Now he says: “What we have done is try to give them as much as we can at the present time. Don’t forget that there has been a public sector pay freeze. We’re in pretty tough times.”

All the good work that chancellor Rishi Su­nak has done will be forgotten if the nurses are not rewarded generously for all that they have done right through the pandemic. “Beyond the call of duty” is, I think, the relevant phrase.

Money alone cannot compensate the nurs­es for their dedication, but one per cent is rightly seen by them as an insult.

More than once the chancellor promised to do “whatever it takes” to see the country through the Covid crisis. The nurses should not have to fight or threaten to go on strike – as the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) has done. It wants a 12.5 per cent pay raise – which I think the government should somehow finance.

The RCN’s chief executive and general sec­retary, Dame Donna Kinnair, pointed out that one per cent would mean just £3.50 more per week in take-home pay for an experienced nurse. “This is pitiful and bitterly disappoint­ing,” she said. “The government is danger­ously out of touch with nursing staff, NHS workers and the public.”

Let’s not forget that Britain’s nurses were named winners of the GG2 Pride of Britain Award last month. Dame Kinnair collected the award on their behalf.

The government made much of the £32 million raised for the NHS by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore as he turned 100. People paid their donations because of the high regard in which nurses are held.

Sunak should do “whatever it takes” by way of saying thank you to the nurses.