RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger said:

“The prime minister’s mission of national renewal will succeed or fail on turning the NHS around and nursing staff are hungry to play their part. But to rebuild and modernise our health service, ministers must now show their working. We need new and urgent investment in the nursing workforce, which is so crucial to delivering their vision.

“The health secretary is right to say there are more nurses, but today in our NHS, an underpaid and undervalued nursing workforce is caring for growing numbers of patients with ever more complex needs. In hospitals across the country, overstretched nursing staff are still left to treat people in corridors. If modernisation is to mean anything, it must also mean consigning these unsafe and undignified conditions to the history books.

“While there have been positive proposals for improving pay in the care sector through a fair pay agreement, the test will be if it delivers sustained improvements to pay and conditions across social care, taking account of the real living wage. This will require new investment, beyond that announced today.

“Nursing staff, wherever they work, are the key to the success of the government's plans for national renewal. Ministers must finally show how they are valued but there has been no indication from today’s speeches that action on this is imminent.”

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