Responding to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care’s speech to the Labour Conference, RCN General Secretary Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger said:

“The health secretary has made a powerful case for investing in maternity and early years care. Delivering a national maternity plan and expanding community services including family hubs will be key in shifting to a prevention model. Nursing roles like health visitors and school nurses deliver vital interventions to mothers, babies and children, and will need to spearhead this drive to improve early years health. They have the expertise, but their numbers have collapsed over the last decade. That will need to be addressed in the forthcoming workforce plan if we are to give all people the best start.

“Social care reform is profoundly needed and a National Care Service on the scale of the NHS will need a workforce to match. A robust workforce plan for social care must bolster the number of registered nurses in the sector, which has dramatically fallen in recent years. A national collective pension scheme for care will offer security to the tens of thousands of workers across the sector, allowing them to save for retirement in one government-backed place, and will be absolutely crucial for making it a more attractive place to work. Adult social care is one of the lowest paid sectors in the economy and the new negotiating body must result in meaningful improvement to pay, terms and conditions.

“However, the elephant in the room today was NHS pay, which is the key to recruiting and retaining the skilled staff the government’s vision needs. Nursing staff continue to be left behind and it is unacceptable that talks on reforming an outdated pay structure are faltering and lacking in real commitments from ministers. The health secretary must show nursing staff she has their back and inject urgency and funding into talks. Staff will then help make her plans a reality.”

Ends 

Notes to editors 

A recent joint letter from the RCN, other unions and the TUC highlighted the importance of the independence and autonomy of the Negotiating Body to determine the scope of the negotiations without limits being set by government.

Research published by the RCN in May showed that understaffing meant that half of health visitors (51%) are struggling to deliver mandated health checks to families with children. In their report 'Prevention Starts Here’, the RCN highlighted the impact of the long-term failure to invest in key children’s nursing roles and said the situation has created a ‘ticking time bomb’ for public health.