The Welsh Government have offered health workers in Wales a one-off payment to try to end the on-going strikes in Wales.
NHS staff in Wales have been offered a pay rise of between 4% and 5.5%, but the Royal College of Nursing is looking for a 19% increase. Mark Drakeford has constantly said it would not be possible to increase their pay offer until there was an agreement in England that would lead to a Barnett consequential.
However, the First Minister has now said that, following cabinet meetings over Christmas, they have presented a new offer to unions. Speaking to Dan Davies on BBC Wales' Sunday Supplement program, Mr Drakeford said: "We have written to the key trade unions in the health field on Friday inviting them to meetings this coming week. We put a package of measures together which we think can form the basis of a negotiation."
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He was then asked if this "includes an increase in pay?" To this the First Minister said it included "an offer of a one-off payment in the current financial year". He then stressed that the Welsh Government couldn't afford to make this a permanent offer until there was a resolution in England.
He said: "What we cannot do, what we just simply haven't got the money to do is to raise this year's offer in a way that gets consolidated in people's pay packets and goes on having to be paid for future years."
So, where has this new money come from? According to Mark Drakeford it has come from moving money around from other planned spending. "A lot of work has gone on over the Christmas period - cabinet has been meeting over Christmas," he said. "Looking at ways in which in this final quarter of the current financial year, we could reorder the spending that we had planned, to free up money that would allow us to make a one-off payment to people who work in our health service alongside other measures that our letter sets out too. Now, that's a basis for negotiation I hope and we invite our trade union colleagues to come in and be around the table with us next week."
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