Labour promises to abolish Government’s ‘insulting’ NHS staff pay cap

Labour is promising to remove the Government’s harsh pay cap for NHS staff to end what it called a “recruitment crisis” threatening patient care.

Wage rises for more than one million health service employees – including midwives, nurses, doctors, dentists, paramedics and cleaners – will no longer be limited to one per cent if the party wins the election, it said.

Decisions would again be made by independent review bodies, Labour said – making it almost certain that pay would no longer be cut in real terms, because of rising inflation.

The pledge forms part of a “three point election guarantee for NHS staff”, including a new legal guarantee of safe staffing levels and “fully funded education”.

Under current Conservative plans, the one per cent pay cap will stay in place until 2020 – despite inflation, as measured by the Retail Prices Index, running at 3.2 per cent.

By the end of the decade, the cap would have been in place for an unprecedented eight years, despite the Government’s own advisers urging a rethink.

Cutting pay in real terms is adding to already serious understaffing in the NHS as despairing staff walk away, the NHS pay review body said – as workloads are growing.

It warned, last month: “It is clear that current public sector pay policy is coming under stress. There are significant supply shortages in a number of staff groups and geographical areas.”

Speaking at the Unison Health Conference in Liverpool on Wednesday, Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s health spokesman will say: “Our NHS staff are the very pride of Britain.

“Yet they are ignored, insulted, undervalued, overworked and underpaid by this Tory government. Not anymore. Enough is enough.

“What is bad for NHS staff is bad for patients too. Short staffing means reduced services and a threat to patient safety.

“I can pledge today that a Labour government will scrap the pay cap and give our NHS workers the pay they deserve.”

The NHS is short of “thousands of nurses, midwives, GPs and paramedics that we need”, after seven years of Tory mismanagement, Mr Ashworth will add.

Removing the pay cap would be funded by reversing Conservative cuts to corporation tax, Labour has said.

The three-point plan will promise to:

* Increase NHS pay to a “sustainable level”, with awards made through “collective bargaining and the evidence of independent pay review bodies”.

* Legislate for safe staffing – to “ensure that patient safety always takes priority over financial considerations when staffing levels are being set”.

* Fully fund education for health professions – by reversing cuts to funding and other support for students taking health-related degrees.

The plan will be unveiled against the backdrop of evidence that Labour’s traditional healthy lead on the NHS as a political issue has melted away under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

A poll this week found that 40 per cent of voters are confident Labour would run the health service well, little more than the 38 per cent who think the same of the Tories.

Philip Dunne, a health minister, insisted the Conservatives had “protected and increased the NHS budget and got thousands more staff in hospitals”.

“That’s at risk with Jeremy Corbyn’s nonsensical economic policies that would mean less money for the NHS,” he claimed.