The pay cap imposed on NHS staff in England and Wales in 2010 is to be lifted, with trade unions and government negotiators poised to agree an average 6.5% wage increase over three years.
More than a dozen trade unions, including Unison and the Royal College of Nursing, “are understood to have drawn up a deal with NHS Employers, the body that negotiates on behalf of the Government”, says the Financial Times.
Under the deal, the 1.3 million workers on the Agenda for Change contract - which includes all staff barring doctors, dentists and some senior managers - will receive a 3% rise in 2018-19, 2% in 2019-20, and 1% in 2020-21.
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Money is also expected to be set aside for similar rises in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
A “controversial proposal to force staff to give up a day’s holiday in exchange for a rise has been dropped”, says The Times.
“There had been fears that the condition, described as ‘mean-spirited’ by John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, would have irritated staff and made it harder to retain workers who are already contributing unpaid overtime,” the newspaper adds.
The Government “indicated some time ago that the pay cap, which had been one of the main restrictions that held back public spending, was over”, says the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
Theresa May was criticised during last year’s general election campaign when she told a nurse, who had complained during a televised debate that her pay had remained flat since 2009, that there was no “magic money tree” for pay rises.
But this deal could “pave the way for expensive, even if overdue, pay deals for other parts of the public sector”, Kuenssberg writes.
Crucially, “sources say the deal will be fully funded by the Treasury, rather than coming out of existing NHS budgets”, she adds.
The 14 unions representing NHS employees will recommend the new deal to their members at a meeting of the NHS Staff Council today, and it will then be put to a vote.
However, it is “hard to predict how union members will respond to the proposed deal, even though their leaders will endorse it”, says The Guardian.
“They have seen their real-terms income fall by an estimated 14% as a result of having a pay freeze imposed on them in 2011 and 2012, and then seen their salaries rise by just 1% in the five years since.”
