NHS: Nursing Workforce Debate
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Lord Hendy
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NHS: Nursing Workforce
Lord Hendy Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hendy (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that the most important mechanism for retaining nursing staff in the NHS is by improving their wages, terms and conditions, and that the best way of doing that is by the restoration of full sectoral collective bargaining, as was the case in 2018?
Lord Bethell (Con)
I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s great experience and expertise in this matter. He will be aware that we have a social partnership forum, where we work extremely closely with the professions on how to improve retention. But I think that the motivation of those in public service and, in particular, in healthcare is much more complex than he describes. We have come to a 3% pay agreement with the nurses, and they have demonstrated huge support for the healthcare service during the pandemic, which suggests that it is more complex than he describes.