Low-paid health workers including nurses look set to lose jobs or pay. The move would break one of two promises made by David Cameron and George Osborne.
Low-paid frontline health workers, including nurses, are set to lose either pay or jobs in what would amount to a breach of one of two key Tory promises. The latest unwinding follows the news, first reported by Left Foot Forward, that the Tory-led Government’s promise to protect NHS spending had come unstuck.
The Observer today reports that:
The NHS plans to make 35,000 nurses, cleaners and medical secretaries redundant unless staff accept a pay deal that will see them lose up to several thousand pounds a year…
The 1.1 million workers facing the dilemma are mostly the lowest-paid, who, in common with other public sector workers, are already facing two years with no pay rise from April. They are on NHS pay bands 1-6, earning between £13,653 and £34,189.
In an interview with Andrew Marr on the Sunday before the general election, David Cameron said:
“any cabinet minister if I win the election, if we win the election, who comes to me and says, “Here are my plans” and they involve frontline reductions, they’ll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again.”
Cuts to frontline jobs in the health service would follow the cuts already announced in the police force and justice system. Meanwhile, George Osborne used the Budget to announce:
“That is why the Government is asking the public sector to accept a two-year pay freeze. But we will protect the lowest paid.
“In the past I have said that we would be able to exclude the one million public sector workers earning less than £18,000 from a one year pay freeze. Today, because we have had to ask for a two year freeze, I extend the protection to cover the 1.7 million public servants who earn less than £21,000.
So either Cameron’s promise of frontline reductions or Osborne’s promise on low paid public servants will be breached. No wonder Mike Jackson of Unison said NHS workers faced “a very tough choice, to accept that they should take a drop in their living standards to save the jobs of their colleagues in some cases”.
76 Responses to “Another Tory broken promise on health”
scandalousbill
Mr. Sensible,
I wish what you say was true. Sadly, this article by Randeep Ramesh from the Dec 15th Guardian leads to the opposite conclusion.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/15/nhs-reforms-health-andrew-lansley?intcmp=239
“At the heart of the change is the shift of £80bn of taxpayers’ money into the hands of England’s 35,000 family doctors who operate as essentially private businesses. Lansley admitted that he had conducted no surveys of GPs before launching the white paper – despite outright opposition from four in 10 doctors.
The health secretary said the government will produce a parliamentary bill next month to abolish the 152 primary care trusts, which at present buy treatments on behalf of patients, by 2013. Also going are the 10 strategic health authorities, which Lansley says are a tier of bureaucracy. Instead GPs will be forced to band together into “consortia” to purchase hospital care and manage budgets to pay for it.”
Granted Lansley is not Cameron’s flavour of the month, but these ill conceived measures have not as of yet been a Tory led Coalition U-turn.
Wellescent Health Forums
With the state of economy in Britain being so bad, front line workers should have to take a pay cut. Overall, the salaries of all public sector employees should be tied to the state of the economy and private sector wages so that these workers can both reap the rewards of the economy when it is doing well and contribute to cutting costs when times are lean. Far too much money is spent in renegotiating contracts on a regular basis.
donald james pearl
RT @leftfootfwd: Another Tory broken promise on health http://bit.ly/hV6XqY
Spir.Sotiropoulou
RT @leftfootfwd: Another Tory broken promise on health http://bit.ly/hV6XqY
John Green
Will,
It is far too late for this type of whinging. I can’t remember hearing your protests when Blair/Brown et al were devouring the seed corn.
We are now in the brown stuff up to our necks and many of us can’t swim! There is not one single voice from the left of politics with any constructive ideas on solving the nation’s problems.