Public Sector Pay 2024-25

Debate between Beth Winter and Bim Afolami

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Bim Afolami]

Although this a debate about public sector pay, I will say this in relation to nurses: we have more nurses now than we had at the beginning of the Parliament. There are problems with the retention and recruitment of nurses, which we are addressing, but those problems are receding and those who leave do so for a range of reasons. We are working with the Health Secretary and across Government to ensure that we retain high-quality staff across our public services. Pay is of course part of that consideration, as it is for us all.

The Government strongly believe that dedication to public service should be appropriately rewarded, which is why for the 2023-24 pay round we accepted the headline pay recommendations of the public sector review bodies in full—for the armed forces, teachers, prison officers, the police, the judiciary, medical workforces and senior civil servants. What precisely does that mean for those professions? To answer, I will give three clear examples.

First, it means that policemen and policewomen received a 7% uplift that rightly recognises the risk that those brave men and women take at work. Secondly, teachers, who have been mentioned today, have received a 6.5% uplift and an increase in starting salary for newly qualified teachers to £30,000—significantly above the median wage in this country—which helps to ensure that we can continue to attract the brightest and best to safeguard our children’s education. Thirdly, NHS consultants, doctors, dentists and GPs have received uplifts of 6%, with junior doctors receiving an enhanced pay increase that averaged 8.8%.

Alongside those headline pay awards, we have since agreed offers with the unions representing senior medical workforces, including consultants, which covered reforms to their pay structures. The junior doctors strike has come up in this debate, as one would expect. We were in talks with the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee, but they unfortunately chose to walk away. I am saddened by the strike because, frankly, it is having an impact on all our constituents. Nobody in this House should want the strike to continue. We urge the junior doctors committee to reconsider its decision, call off the strikes and come back to the table so that we can make further progress. Its demand of a 35% salary increase is unreasonable, and I hope the committee is reflecting on that and will come back to the table as soon as possible.

The pay settlements I mentioned appropriately reward the key role that staff play in safeguarding public health and the health of our NHS.

[Beth Winter]

The Minister has spoken a lot about the pay increase, but in preparation for the debate we received a number of submissions from trade unions, including the RCN, Unison and the NEU, which made two points that the Minister has not addressed and on which I will table questions. The first was regarding the independent review bodies’ concerns about terms of appointments and reference terms for multi-year deals. I did raise that specific question, but the Minister failed to respond.

The unions’ second point was the pay restoration argument. The figures are staggering, but I will just pick out a couple: nurses have seen a 27% decline in the value of their pay since 2009; social workers have seen a decline of 28%; and all that the junior doctors—who the Minister just mentioned—are asking for is pay restoration back to those 2010 pay award levels. Surely they are entitled to that, and it is not too much to ask. The strikers I was with on the frontline on Monday were having to cut heating and food; they were struggling. They do not want to be on the picket line. All they want is pay restoration. I really hope the Minister addresses that issue.

[Bim Afolami]

Median pay in the public sector in 2023 was 9% greater than in the private sector, which is broadly in line with the gap between the two sectors over the past decade, so I do not fully accept the situation described by the hon. Lady. To repeat the point I made at the beginning of my remarks: inflation does erode the spending power of wages, which is why it is so important to focus on bringing down inflation.

Let me address another point that the hon. Lady made—as did the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby—about health in Wales. As everybody in the House knows, health is fully devolved in Wales; the Welsh Government set health worker pay in Wales, just as the Scottish Government do in Scotland.

Let me answer the question about when the devolved Governments will know their final budgets, which was asked by either the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) or the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon): they will do so following the conclusion of the supplementary documents process, which I believe is published after the Budget. That information will come.