Senior Tory minister hints at U-turn over NHS pay amid outcry over 1% rise

A senior cabinet minister has said he hopes NHS staff will be given an “appropriate” pay rise, suggesting Boris Johnson’s government could still perform a U-turn over the proposed 1 per cent increase.

Ministers have faced a furious outcry after setting out the planned increase – a sum branded “pitiful” and “insulting” by Labour and the health unions.

However, justice secretary Robert Buckland appeared to strike a more conciliatory note on Tuesday, saying that the submission to the NHS pay review body was only the “beginning of a process”.

“The final recommendations have not yet been made,” he told BBC Breakfast. “We have got to remember that in large other swathes of the public sector there will be a pay freeze save for the lowest paid. I don’t think at the moment we are at the end of this process.

“I think that we need to see what the recommendations are, and I very much hope that the outcome … that the work that has been done by NHS workers will be recognised in a way that is appropriate.”

He added: “It is not for me to start to prejudge what the outcome of the negotiations is. I am simply pointing out that we are at the beginning of that process and we will have to see what the recommendations are.”

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is setting up a £35m industrial action fund in response to the recommended pay rise. The 1 per cent increase would amount to only £3.50 a week, the nursing union said.

The RCN described the prime minister as “out-of-touch” after he claimed on the government was looking after their wellbeing at his latest No 10 press conference.

Dame Donna Kinnair, the union’s chief executive, said MrJohnson’s remarks “will appear blase to nursing staff who have been told they’re worth only an extra £3.50 after a decade of wage losses in the middle of a pandemic”.

Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive at NHS England and NHS Improvement, told MPs on Tuesday that he supported the government’s approach to resolving the dispute over NHS pay.

Speaking at the Commons’ health and social care committee, Sir Simon said: “I think the right way to resolve this is the path the government has actually set out.

“Which is to ask the independent pay review bodies to look at all of the evidence ... and be able to independently make a fair recommendation so that NHS staff get the pay and reward that they deserve.”

However, the NHS chief confirmed that government plans set out in 2019 had budgeted for NHS pay to rise by 2.1 per cent this year – an increase Labour MPs have demanded as the bare “minimum” offer.

On Monday, Tory care minister Helen Whately told MPs the 2.1 per cent was not just for a pay rise, but for other existing NHS costs.

Sir Simon told MPs: “At the time, the working assumption was that there would be available 2.1 per cent for the costs of the Agenda for Change pay group in 2021-22.”