Nurses REJECT pay offer as Chancellor boasts about ending strikes

Rachel Reeves was left embarrassed today after nurses rejected a new pay award - at the same time as the Chancellor boasted about ending public sector strikes. 

Mid-way through Ms Reeves' speech to Labour's conference in Liverpool, the Royal College of Nursing announced they were refusing to accept the Government's offer.

The union said two-thirds of members had voted against a 5.5 per cent pay increase for this year, which ministers had hoped would settle a long-running row.

The RCN, which staged a series of disruptive strikes as part of the dispute, said there had been 'a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves'.

Their rejection of the Government's pay award came as Ms Reeves addressed Labour members at the party's conference for the first time as Chancellor, in a speech that was disrupted by a Gaza protester.

During her speech, she hailed how she had acted to end widespread industrial action by announcing a series of salary hikes within weeks of Labour winning power.

Ms Reeves said: 'I am proud to stand here as the first Chancellor in 14 years to have delivered a meaningful, real pay rise to millions of public sector workers.

'We made that choice. We made that choice not just because public sector workers needed that pay rise.

'But because it was the right choice for parents, patients and for the British public. 

'The right choice for recruitment and retention. And it was the right choice for our country.'

The Chancellor also dismissed Tory criticism of Labour's public sector pay rises - at the same time as claiming a £22billion 'black hole' in the nation's finances - by saying she would relish 'a fight' with the Conservatives. 

'If the Conservative Party, if they want a fight about this,' she added. 'If they want to argue we should have ignored the independent pay review bodies.

'That public sector workers' pay should fall further behind the cost of living. That ordinary families should pay the price of industrial action.

'If the Conservatives Party want a fight about who can be trusted to make the right choices for our public services and those who use them. Then I say bring it on.'

Ms Reeves announced she had approved a 5.5 per cent pay rise for nurses and other NHS workers in England on 29 July.

Junior doctors were also handed a pay deal worth 22 per cent over two years to end their long-running dispute. 

The RCN today revealed, following a vote of 145,000 members, that nurses had rejected the Government's offer.

In a letter to the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the union's general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said: 'We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves, their patients and the NHS they believe in.'

She added: 'To raise standards and reform the NHS, you need safe numbers of nursing staff and they need to feel valued.

'Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start.

'This outcome shows their expectations of Government are far higher.

'Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments.

'Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades – they need to see that the Government's reform agenda will transform their profession as a central part of improving care for the public.'

Responding to the RCN's rejection of the Government's pay award, Mr Streeting told Times Radio: 'I'd say to nurses and in fact the whole NHS workforce, we know what you've been through, we know how hard it has been.

'But they also know that for the first time in a long time they've got a Government that's on their side, wants to work with them to take the NHS from the worst crisis in its history to get it back on its feet and make it fit for the future.

'We're going to be one team, we're going to do it together and we're going to do something we can be proud of for the rest of our lives.

'You're looking for a bit of goodwill? I've already got the nurses' goodwill. I need to repay that goodwill by giving them the tools they need to do the job and that's exactly what I'm going to do.'

Tory MP Victoria Atkins, the shadow health secretary, said: 'Labour was warned that if they gave an inflation-busting pay rise to junior doctors then other hard-working health staff would ask why they aren't as valued by this Government.

'As a result of that decision, this response by RCN was clearly foreseeable, yet the Chancellor and Health Secretary seem taken aback that their short-term decisions have long-term consequences.

'In under three months, this Labour Government has stopped new hospitals being built, scrapped NHS productivity improvements, overseen GPs entering industrial action, been exposed in a health cronyism scandal and has now opened a dispute with hundreds of thousands of nurses and midwives.

'For the sake of patients, NHS staff and taxpayers, the Health Secretary must step away from press releases and explain what plans he has to reach an agreement with nurses, midwives and other healthcare staff.

'Action now, not words about the past, is needed.'