A representative of the Royal College of Nursing has said that the Welsh Government's offer of a one-off payment "doesn't cut it" for their members. It comes after pay negotiations took place on Thursday, January 12, but no agreement was reached.
During an interview with BBC Radio Wales Breakfast show with Oliver Hides on Friday morning, the associate director of the Royal College of Nursing Wales, Nicky Hughes, said that the one-off payment offered by the government would go "nowhere" and that the union was still calling for a "restorative payment award" for its members.
According to a report published by the Financial Times on Thursday, the Welsh Government are seeking to end the NHS strikes in Wales with a one-off payment worth about £1,000 to all health service staff. According to the newspaper, the move could "heap pressure" on UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is "grappling with the worst wave of UK strikes in decades", to follow suit in England.
Read more: Ambulance and nursing unions to continue strikes in Wales and say Welsh Government offer 'not sufficient'
Those who were briefed on the Welsh Government's proposal said that a pot of money would allow for a one-off payment of about £1,000 to all NHS staff in Wales for the financial year 2022-23, the report said. But unions have said that the offer of £1,000 did not yet amount to a formal offer.
Speaking about the meeting that failed to get a breakthrough on Thursday, Nicky Hughes told the BBC: "To have finally getting round a table, I think we were led to believe that we were going to negotiate and that we would come out of that meeting possibly with the one-off payment that again we wouldn’t have accepted anyway, but at least with some kind of military figure for our members.
"Actually there was no discussion in that meeting in terms of what our members could get, it was very much a one-off payment, there’s one pot of money to be shared across the NHS and at this point there is no figure on what each individual would have.
"We are still talking about a one-off payment, which goes nowhere, the restorative payment award we are looking for our members, what we are looking for is a year-on-year increase. The one-off payment has tax and then NI deducted from it really doesn’t cut it for our members. We are going to have to announce strike dates now and that will be imminently announced."
Meanwhile, in an interview with journalist Catrin Haf Jones on S4C's Y Byd yn ei Le on Thursday evening, Welsh Health Minister Eluned Morgan MS was discussing the current pressures the NHS in Wales was facing and what the Welsh Government was doing about it.
It comes after after the Welsh Government sent out letters to health boards across Wales telling them to consider sending patients home without care packages, which could free up beds for those needing urgent care. Governing bodies such as the BMA has said that such a policy could be "dangerous".
In response, Eluned Morgan acknowledged there was a risk to the policy. She told S4C: "There is a risk of course. The risk is that you are sending someone home. What we’ve been clear about with hospitals is that you shouldn’t send someone home if they are clinically not ready to go, what we need to do is for example get the local government to step in to ensure that they take responsibility for this risk, which at the moment is lying too much on the health service."
She then added: "A risk already exists - there’s a risk there when the ambulance service can’t reach someone fast enough. That’s where the risk is at the moment. That’s the balance that I need to help to make a decision, that’s why when we say if people have had the treatment they need it is important that we free up those beds. What is interesting is the amount of families who have stepped forward and said they are more than willing to help, to get our loved ones out of the hospital."
Later on in the interview, when asked if she believed the Welsh Government had done enough, she replied: "Let’s be clear, there’s a lot more a government can do, especially when you have an ageing population. Of course, we can do more - there’s always space to do more.
"But I do think it’s important that people understand that this challenge in which Aneurin Bevan created the health service in 1948, people worked until they were 65 and would die at 68, that was the reality. By now, the success of the health service has also created issues for the health service because now people live longer, with complex problems, and as a society perhaps we haven’t accepted how much extra we have to pay for that gap that didn’t exist when Aneurin Bevan was alive."
The Royal College of Nursing have now said it could announce further strike days "imminently". In response, the Health Minister thanked all health unions that attended Thursday's meeting and for "engaging in the discussion constructively".
She added: "We recognise and respect the strength of feeling among the membership of the unions, which has been expressed through the recent ballots for industrial action and the strikes. I hope we can continue these discussions in the spirit of social partnership.”
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