RCN responds to Autumn Statement

Published: 05 December 2012

The Royal College of Nursing today welcomed George Osborne’s commitment to national pay, but warned that a one per cent pay rise will do little for the morale of nursing staff.

Responding to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, Dr Peter Carter, Chief Executive & General Secretary of the RCN, said: "Nurses will welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to national pay arrangements in the NHS. We now hope that experiments such as the south west pay consortium will come to a natural end. The RCN has long been arguing that the pitfalls of regional pay are numerous and represent nothing more than an attack on nursing staff at a time when resources are stretched. National pay arrangements are a fair and flexible way of ensuring that the right staff are in the right place to deliver quality care for patients."

On the one per cent pay rise, Dr Carter said the RCN recognised that public finances are stretched. "However, nurses have already been hit by a two-year pay freeze at a time of rising living costs and a greatly increased workload because of staff cuts and NHS reforms."

He added: "Our evidence shows that NHS staff have endured a real terms pay cut of up to nine per cent in the last two years. A rise of one per cent will do little to improve the morale of an over-stretched workforce."

On the recycling of efficiency savings, Dr Carter said nurses were working hard to find the £20 billion in savings in England on the basis that it will be reinvested back into frontline care. "However, there is currently little evidence that this is happening and almost £3 billion of it was recently clawed back by the Treasury. The reality is that nursing, unlike other clinical professions, has not been protected. We know that more than 7,000 nursing posts have gone since 2010 and that many staff are completely over-stretched and unable to deliver the quality of patient care they would wish to provide."