Why NHS workers shouldn’t get a pay rise

The Government in the person of Rishi Sunak won a surprisingly positive public response to what was essentially a tax-raising Budget this week.

Within 24 hours though, the same government had spectacularly lost the PR contest by recommending a 1 per cent pay rise for NHS staff across the board. The outcry was universal: mean, measly, an insult, a slap in the face, not a way to treat ‘our heroes’ – or, more personally, those who saved the Prime Minister’s life.

The rise – and it is currently just a recommendation to the NHS pay review body – is indeed a mistake. In fact, it is a double mistake, but not in the way it is being presented. The first error is diplomatic and tactical. Any pandemic-year pay rise proposed for the NHS was always going to be dismissed as ‘derisory’. The Government would have done better to include the NHS within its policy of no pay rise for the public sector, keeping its 1 per cent powder dry for the inevitable later bargaining.