A deal to settle the NHS industrial dispute for most workers could be reached by Thursday as intensive talks begin.
Sources told the Mirror there is optimism ministers can come up with a pay offer that unions are happy to take back to members by the end of three days of planned negotiations this week.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay and junior minister Will Quince head up the Government’s negotiating team which sat down with the NHS Staff Council from 11am today.
Unions are insisting “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” and have demanded that all involved refrain from leaking a “running commentary” of talks.
The unions now involved in talks are Unison, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, GMB, Unite, the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Nursing.
The three days of talks could end with a new offer over improved pay for this year and next for the bulk of staff on the NHS’s main Agenda for Change contract.
If no agreement on a revised pay offer is reached, a decision will be made whether to continue negotiations next week.
The talks exclude most doctors and the British Medical Association is still planning strike action starting with an unprecedented 72-hour walk out from Monday.
Mr Barclay struck a conciliatory tone when asked about the talks in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: “When nurses and paramedics voted to take strike action, the Secretary of State refused to negotiate and said the pay review body’s decision was final.
“Now he has u-turned, but not before 144,000 operations and appointments were cancelled through his incompetence. Will the Secretary of State now apologise to patients for this avoidable disruption?”
Mr Barclay replied: “What he omits to remind the House is that at that time the demand from the trade unions was for a 19% consolidated pay rise, which is very different to the basis on which talks have been entered.
“The point is we are in discussion with trade union colleagues, we have a shared purpose to address the very real challenges that we recognise that the NHS workforce has faced, particularly in the context of the pandemic, and a shared desire between the trade unions and the Government to focus on patients, and ensuring we get the right care in support of patients.”
The Government had previously just held talks with the nurses, but these have now been “folded in” to the wider staff negotiating group.
Unions have agreed to postpone strike action while talks are ongoing, but an ambulance strike set for March 20 is yet to be called off.
And unions can still plan future strike dates.
Until last week the Tories had insisted that only a pay rise of 4% was affordable for the NHS despite inflation running at over 10%.
