Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s department has been reported to the UK stats watchdog for allegedly posting a misleading tweet exaggerating nurse pay.
The post on the official DHSC account 10 days ago claimed nurses received a pay rise of £1,400 this year putting the most experienced on more than £40,000.
It added: “We regret that some union members have voted for industrial action.”
But shadow Public Health minister Andrew Gwynne said: “The Conservatives are using official Government propaganda to gaslight nurses.
“Nurses know their pay hasn’t increased, and patients know there aren’t enough nurses to treat them. Social media spin isn’t going to persuade them otherwise.”
Royal College of Nursing General Secretary Pat Cullen added: “Ministers have dedicated more time to publicly criticising our members’ than finding common ground.
“Nurses are now effectively working one day a week for free. It is no wonder that recent polling shows three-quarters of the public back nurses going on strike.
“The clock is ticking on the Health Secretary. He is aware that if he does not open formal and detailed pay negotiations, we will be announcing strike dates.”
Mr Gwynne has now written to UK Statistics Authority boss Sir Robert Chope accusing the DHSC of publishing a pay chart which is “deliberately misleading” and demanding an investigation.
He said official government Twitter accounts should not be used for party political purposes and should have admitted nurse pay has fallen up to 20% in real terms since 2010.
He adds: “There also seems to have been a conscious decision to choose the top and bottom of bands rather than the mean or median in each band.”
The tweet repeats claims by Mr Barclay that a million NHS workers have had at least £1,400 rises this year on top of 3% last year.
Mr Gwynne added: “The Conservatives crashed the economy and allowed inflation to go through the roof, yet they still have the nerve to pretend working people are better off.
“Instead of lying to their faces, the Government should be negotiating with nurses and finding a deal to avert strikes in the NHS.”
A strike ballot of the RCN’s 300,000 nurses means half of the UK’s hospitals could see walk outs before Christmas. They have rejected a Government offer of 4.75% and are demanding above inflation rises of 17%.
A DHSC spokesperson said: “The graphic used with the tweet was a visual representation of how nurses pay has increased and all the figures in the graphic are factually accurate.”
NHS Providers chief Saffron Cordery warned industrial action will make the record seven million long queue for treatment even worse.
She added: “Alarm bells should be ringing across Whitehall.”
NOTE: This story originally named the head of the UK Statistics Authority as Sir Christopher Chope. It has been updated to correctly identify him as Sir Robert Chope. We are happy to correct the error.
