The NHS' tiny 1% pay raise is a slap in the face to the UK's frontline workers who've risked their lives to protect us
REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
- After a year of risking their lives, British NHS staff have been offered a 1% pay rise.
- However, the "increase" has been dubbed a real-terms pay cut.
- This is a slap in the face to nurses and health workers, many of whom are suffering from PTSD, depression and anxiety in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Parisa Hashempour is a freelance journalist and International Studies lecturer living in the Netherlands.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
As a British person, the NHS is in my DNA.
When my little sisters' lips turned blue, I watched my parents sweep her into the car and to the community hospital. I watched as nurses brought her back to life.
I watched my amazing dad dedicate his life to the health service. I watched passionate friends and family members train to become nurses and doctors too. As students, they worked twelve-hour shifts in hospitals, saw patients die, and duly paid up fees for the privilege of caring for them.
This past year, we have all turned our eyes to watch nurses, doctors and healthcare assistants around the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After a lifetime of watching, I was not surprised to see the bravery and resilience the workforce responded with. And although saddened, this month I was also not surprised to watch my government offer these same workers a slap in the face in the form of a 1% pay rise.
Pay cut in disguise
Founded in 1948, the British National Health Service (NHS) is the beloved backbone of the country's post-Second World War welfare system. While not without its problems, it delivers free and low-cost healthcare for all members of society. Despite a decade of budget squeezing, it remains to be considered one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Put simply, it is the pride of my country.
That pride swelled for all of us during the current pandemic. Yet rather than recompense those that make up its ranks, the government has offered a pay rise which has since been dubbed the equivalent of a pay cut.
Overstretched and underpaid nurses say the offer, which is intended for all except dentists and General Practitioner doctors, will leave them with just an additional £3.50 ($4.88) per week. When inflation is considered, and within the context of an overall £30 billion reduction in healthcare budgets for the next financial year compared with this one, the announcement is more insult than reward.
Keir Starmer and his opposition Labour Party have matched the cry of NHS boss Simon Stevens, who says that staff deserve a 2.1% rise instead. However, for those frontline workers who delivered us through the pandemic, even this call does not go far enough.
NHS England employs around 1.3 million people, meaning that most Brits have a personal connection with the service's workers. Perhaps this is partly why the public response has been overwhelmingly one of outrage. A poll by 38 Degrees found that 83% of the public think the rise is too low, and 53% believe NHS nurses deserve at least a 5% increase.
The Royal College of Nursing goes even further. Calling the move "pitiful and bitterly disappointing", they argue that in fact, its members deserve a 12.5% rise instead.
COVID-19 recovery
The Institute for Fiscal Studies agrees that 1% offers far too little to frontline workers who have already had their pay frozen for a year, and are set to face increasing challenges in the coming months due to a backlog in non-COVID-related care.
In response to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak's proposed budget, which includes the new rise, the institute says: "Between April and December 2020, there were 5.3 million fewer referrals for hospital care in England than over the same period in 2019. At least some of these people will need treatment eventually, which will only add to the 4.5 million already on a waiting list for NHS care."
On account of an uncharacteristically Conservative furlough scheme, Sunak is often depicted as the affable "nice guy" outlier within the government's hardline cabinet. Yet, like Sunak himself and the rest of his party, this image is a far cry from reality. The chancellor's 'Eat out to help out' scheme earlier this year encouraged Brits back into restaurants to recharge the economy. The move likely came at the cost of increased COVID-19 rates and, as such, countless lives, sending more and more people to ICU wards and hospital beds. The Institute for Fiscal Studies asserts that "clearing the backlog created by a year of cancelled and delayed procedures will require billions of additional NHS funding in the years to come."
Throughout the course of the pandemic, Boris Johnson and his ministers encouraged the public to open up their windows and clap for the NHS, applauding them as they did their utmost to save the country - that applause feels somewhat of a mockery now that their work may not be appreciated accordingly.
A reported 52,000 NHS staff were sick with COVID-19 and over 850 UK healthcare workers are thought to have died of the virus between March and December last year. One new study from King's College London shows that almost half of NHS critical care staff show symptoms of PTSD, depression and anxiety on account of their time caring for COVID-19 patients.
The time for government action
"The NHS is a shambles, and you are too much of a coward to say so. This was the gist of an email I received from an NHS consultant a few weeks ago. I answered -weakly in his eyes -that I couldn't be sure that the NHS was collapsing," writes Richard Smith for the British Medical Journal. His comments are the opening line to a study, exploring whether the NHS is indeed in decline. It is a view commonly held. One million patients are seen by the NHS each day, yet there is a palpable fear that the service is collapsing under the strain of underfunding and overstretched workers.
In non-pandemic times, studies say that a fifth of people must still wait more than six months for hospital admission, and things are set to get worse. The pandemic meant that in December 2020, more than 224,000 people had been waiting for more than a year for hospital care, compared with just 1,500 at the same point in 2019. It will take some time to recover from this over spill.
Under a decade of austerity cuts and a right-leaning Conservative government, the NHS has been far from a priority in the UK.
In 2017, bursaries for student nurses were scrapped, only to be reintroduced two years later. Brexit reportedly sent almost 9000 nurses and midwives back to their EU home countries and now, the exhausted and overworked heroes of the pandemic continue to receive minimal pay. According to Indeed, the average healthcare assistant makes just £16,775 ($23,384) a year. For comparison, the median UK salary is about £31,460.
It is Sunak and those within the government that must also be held accountable for the increasing privatisation of the public health service, a factor in what feels to many like the NHS's worsening state. From 2019 to 2020, NHS commissioners spent £9.7 billion on services delivered by the private sector, an amount that has more than doubled since 2009.
In order to protect the system British people depend upon, the government must reassess their priorities. Rather than insult and undervalue nurses and healthcare workers through performative, and ultimately useless pay rises, the government must enact true change and extend a helping hand.
Better funding and a reorganisation of the service are both needed so that the UK can recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It's time for Johnson and Sunak to step up and appropriately reward the workers who helped keep them, and all of us, safe.
Parisa Hashempour is a freelance journalist and International Studies lecturer living in the Netherlands.
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