Is the row over the government’s plan to award only a 1 per cent pay rise to NHS workers as politically toxic as some suggest? Labour has certainly seized on it, with Sir Keir Starmer saying ‘Covid heroes’ deserve a pay rise. But Boris Johnson today defended the raise, saying: ‘What we’ve done is try to give them as much as we can at the present moment… We’ve tried to give the NHS as much as we possibly can.’ He also pointed to wider government investment aimed at helping the health service cope with the pandemic.
The pay ‘rise’ might not be as much of a problem in isolation – but all the signs are that the health service is going to be in what most would see as a crisis for a number of years to come after this pandemic.
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