NHS staff should receive a pay rise of at least 4%, as independent experts have advised, putting health workers on a collision course with ministers who have set a firm maximum of 3%.
The Salary Review Body (PRB) will recommend that NHS staff increase this year by between 4% and 5%, according to The Guardian, despite government warnings that carrying out such advice would break the bank.
Health unions warned that even an increase in this order would do little to appease nurses, midwives and other staff members, and fight to avoid the possibility of a strike across the NHS.
They have stressed that NHS workers are struggling with the rising cost of energy, petrol, food and other commodities, which has led some to have to use food banks.
Unions are looking for rises that will at least equal inflation, which stands at 9.1%, the highest in 40 years, although the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is looking for an increase of five percentage points more, a 14 %.
For every additional 1% received by NHS staff in England, it would cost the NHS England about £ 700 million a year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has calculated.
Pat Cullen, the RCN general secretary, said a 4% wage offer would be “an insult”, resulting in a real-time pay cut for nurses and exacerbating the NHS shortage.
“A 4% pay rise would be an insult, leaving an experienced nurse over £ 1,400 a year at worst. Ministers have a very important choice to make: to offer a higher-than-inflation pay rise for the profession of nursing or the current exodus of staff will continue, putting more patients at risk, ”he said.
Health experts and staff groups had widely expected that the PRB would recommend a 3% increase for 2022/23, the same amount as last year, when they sent their detailed advice in writing to the DHSC.
Although it was initially thought to go up again by 3%, the independent group of eight experts has revised their thinking and decided on a figure of around 4% or more, the Guardian has been told.
Their decision to recommend at least 4% will add to pressure on ministers to abandon their insistence, mentioned in their written test in the PRB in February, that 3% was the maximum the government could afford to give staff this year. Anything above 3% would not be ‘affordable’, he said, given the NHS’s need to focus spending on tackling the huge build-up of people waiting for hospital treatment. “Financial moderation of pay is needed,” he told the PRB.
Unison also maintained that 4% would not prevent the growing momentum of industrial action. “Anything less than inflation would be a pay cut,” said Sara Gorton, the union’s health chief.
“But 4% is less than half the cost of living today. Such a low premium could also see dissatisfied healthcare workers asking their unions to act.”
The PRB advises the Prime Minister, the DHSC, the Cabinet Secretary and three delegated administrations on salary increases for the 1.5 million NHS staff across the UK who are covered by the long-term Agenda For Change agreement: all staff except doctors and dentists.
It takes into account a number of factors when shaping its vision, including the need to hire and retain staff, as well as the budgets available to the health departments of the four countries of origin.
However, the DHSC this week has not repeated its previous position that 3% was the maximum that could be allowed, leaving open the possibility that it may support a higher figure.
A DHSC spokesman said: “NHS staff received a 3% pay rise last year, raising the salary of nurses by £ 1,000 on average despite a public sector wage freeze, and we are giving workers of the NHS another pay rise this year.
“No decisions have been made and we will carefully consider the recommendations of the independent salary review bodies.”
If the government decides to abandon its 3% plan and approve a higher wage offer to try to avoid strikes, it could do so, but let the NHS England pay the additional costs involved within its budget. It did so last year, when it only sanctioned a 2.1% rise.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has twice insisted this month that the NHS “needs no more money”. The DHSC recently gave the NHS an additional £ 1.5bn to help cover the cost of this year’s big price hikes, especially energy.