Work with nurses, don’t cap their pay – George

Commenting on the Health Secretary’s proposal to cap a 1% pay increase for health workers next year, Liberal Democrat Health Select Committee member, Andrew George MP, urged Government Ministers to work with frontline health workers rather than to demoralise them.

Mr George said:  “I’m not sure that hard working and dedicated registered nurses will take kindly to the Health Secretary (Ministerial and MP salary circa £200,000) telling them (Band 6 registered nurses £21,388 to £27,901) that they should not be entitled to either a 1% pay increase nor an annual appraisal based eight point incremental scale.  Many of these nurses will be at the top of the scale anyway after serving the NHS for seven years or more.  So the concept of a perennial ‘annual increment’ is nonsense.

“The same applies to health care workers in the NHS (Band 2, £14,294 – £17,425).

“Perhaps the Health Secretary should come to my meeting in the Commons on Wednesday where nursing leaders and health chiefs will hear the benefits to patients of having safe registered nurse staffing levels on hospital wards.  The better we staff our wards, the sooner patients get better and the sooner they can be discharged, thus saving money.  That’s how we should approach these challenges.  Supporting staff and patients rather than counter-productive penny-pinching.”