COVENTRY South MP Zarah Sultana has called on the Government to get around the table and give nurses the pay rise she feels they deserve.
On Monday – the biggest day of industrial action in the health service’s history – Ms Sultana joined the nurses’ picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital opposite Parliament before asking an urgent question on NHS strikes in the Commons.
She said nurses told her they were ‘striking to save the NHS’.
“Nurses’ pay is down 20 per cent since the Tories came to power and there are now a record 50,000 nursing vacancies in England.
“This isn’t just unfair for nurses, but incredibly unsafe too.”
Ms Sultana added NHS workers had seen their ‘pay slashed and workloads rocket’ which was why more than 40,000 – one in nine – had left the service.
The Minister of State for Health, Will Quince, said the independent pay review body would make a recommendation and the government would ‘look at it and accept it or reject it.’
