The NHS is braced for further strikes as nursing union members are expected to reject the government’s pay offer in the long-running dispute over wages and conditions.
The Royal College of Nursing is expected to vote against accepting a one-off £2,500 payment and a 5 per cent salary increase next year - despite being advised by the union’s leadership to accept it.
The result of the ballot is expected later on Friday and comes as around 47,000 junior doctors strike for a fourth consecutive day in a row over pay.
Unison, which represents nurses and other health workers, is also holding a ballot on the deal, which is due to close later on Friday. It also advised its members to accept the deal.
Shadow Treasury minister James Murray said the government should be “ready to negotiate” if the pay deal is rejected.
“Let’s see what happens and the results of that ballot. But what we’ve said throughout the dispute with the nurses’ pay, and also in terms of all the other sectors of the economy where industrial action has happened or is threatened, is that the government needs to be ready to negotiate,” the Labour MP told Sky News.
“There has to be compromise. There has to be a deal, but it’s in the public’s interest as well as the interest of the workers concerned to get a deal and to avoid strikes going ahead.”
A previous round of strikes in December saw as many as 100,000 nurses take action for 12 hours – the first strike in the RCN’s history.
The union designated a number of areas “exempt from the strike action” including chemotherapy, dialysis, paediatric A&E, critical care units such as intensive care and high dependency, as well as neonatal and paediatric intensive care.
But other services were reduced to a Christmas Day night-duty level.
Around 88,000 appointments were cancelled in the seven weeks around New Year, with the health service hit by both nurse and ambulance strikes.
He added that Labour does not want strikes, which are “damaging to patients”, the NHS and the workers, to go ahead.
Earlier this week, the British Medical Association (BMA) junior doctors committee co-chairman Dr Robert Laurenson came under fire after it emerged he had booked holiday as his colleague took to the picket line.
He insisted he was “still working” during the walkouts but later said “sorry” if striking colleagues felt his absence, to attend the wedding of a family friend, had undermined their cause.
Tory MPs criticised Dr Laurenson’s absence, for which he would be paid annual leave when striking colleagues miss out on their wages, as the junior doctors’ walked out over demands for a full pay restoration that the government said would amount to a 35 per cent pay rise.
The 28-year-old defended his absence from picket lines after prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday said he was "surprised to read" Dr Laurenson was on holiday.
"I can see that you feel undermined and I am really sorry my actions have contributed to that," Dr Laurenson reportedly wrote in an online forum.
