Wes Streeting was just given a MAJOR headache right in the middle of Labour conference

Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members working for the NHS in England have voted to reject the 2024/25 pay award from the UK government. A record 145,000 eligible members cast a vote with two-thirds (64%) of them saying they didn’t accept the 5.5% award. The news cam right in the middle of the Labour conference just as chancellor Rachel Reeves was speaking. It will also give Wes Streeting a major headache, too.

An unexpected Labour conference headache

The pay award was announced by Reeves in late July as she accepted the recommendations of the NHS Pay Review Body (PRB), awarding a 5.5% consolidated pay increase across all bands. This is expected to be paid next month and will be backdated to 1 April 2024.

However, not long after Reeves finished her Labour conference speech, the news broke. The RCN said in a statement:

As this is a pay award rather than a pay offer, the results of our consultation will not directly affect employers’ payment of it. However, it shows our members’ strength of feeling that something fundamental must change for nursing pay.

Our consultation was not a vote on the issue of strike action. By law, a new statutory ballot by post would be needed to authorise industrial action.

The RCN noted that the “government must now demonstrate its commitment to nursing staff by showing that its NHS reform plans will transform the profession as a central part of improving patient care”.

The RCN general secretary and chief executive Professor Nicola Ranger is in Liverpool at the Labour Party conference. She is talking to ministers about the consultation results and the fact that nursing staff want – and deserve – bolder change.

Nurses will not be undervalued

In a letter to health secretary Wes Streeting she said:

We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves, their patients and the NHS they believe in.

Many will support the new government’s health and care agenda as set out in recent weeks and fully recognise the diagnosis of a failing NHS. Working closely with all other professionals, nursing staff are the lifeblood of the service. The government will find our continued support for the reforms key to their success.

To raise standards and reform the NHS, you need safe numbers of nursing staff and they need to feel valued. Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start. This outcome shows their expectations of government are far higher.

Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments. Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades – they need to see that the government’s reform agenda will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.

All this comes amid not only the Labour conference but Streeting trying to fend off other unions’ talk of strike action, too.

Streeting: a bit of a handful

As Sky News reported, the health secretary is negotiating with the BMA junior doctors branch. However, GPs are also causing Streeting a headache.

As the Telegraph reported on 13 September:

GPs will strike if Wes Streeting does not “listen to us”, a senior union figure has warned.

Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, of the British Medical Association (BMA), said there could be further industrial action to come if Mr Streeting, the Health Secretary, does not act rapidly to improve the situation for family doctors.

Surgeries across the country are embarking on work to rule measures designed to bring the NHS to “a standstill” as a protest against “insufficient funding”, with the move following a vote by the BMA over the summer.

So, RCN members sending a clear message of disquiet to the Labour government is yet another NHS-shaped headache – but one of the government’s own making. Whether or not Streeting will address this when he makes his Labour conference speech is unclear.

Featured image via the Canary