Thousands of NHS workers not paid enough to live on, new figures show

Exclusive: ‘We’ve got a moral responsibility’, to pay living wage says NHS trust chief David Bradley

The number of real living wage employers has more than doubled in the past two years (Alamy/PA)

Thousands of NHS workers are not paid enough to live on, new figures have revealed, as employers have been urged to fulfil their “moral” duty to pay staff a living wage.

Figures from the Living Wage Foundation shared exclusively with The Independent, show just 24 NHS trusts out of 219 are accredited real living wage employers, meaning that they offer all staff at least £10.90 an hour. In London, just 13 of the city’s 34 NHS trusts are accredited.

London mayor Sadiq Khan, and an NHS boss David Bradley, have urged NHS trusts in the city to pay a living wage to all, while the union Unite said it was a “scandal” that so many in the capital did not offer it.

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David Bradley, CEO of South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, which is leading the charge to encourage an uplift in pay to the living wage told The Independent “we’ve got a moral responsibility” to offer a living wage.

“We’re all really struggling in terms of getting staff, you know, filling vacancies. If you can show that you are a living wage employer, an accredited employer, that helps to be able to attract [staff].”

Employees must pay national minimum wage rates of between £4.81 and £9.18, depending on age, from school-leaving age up until the age of 23, while workers who are 23 or older must get a wage of £9.50 an hour – rebranded by the government as the “national living wage” in 2016.

However, the Living Wage Foundation sets the real living wage – a higher sum voluntarily paid by more than 11,000 employers based on basic living costs. It stands at £11.95 in London and £10.90 across the rest of the UK, but there is no legal requirement to pay it.

The foundation told The Independent that while it was possible some NHS trusts were providing real living wages without accreditation, it was unlikely.

While most clinical staff, who are contracted under something called Agenda for Change, get a living wage by default, thousands of people who work in catering, cleaning and admin roles are missing out.

Union and NHS leaders said this was often because these services are outsourced to private sector organisations that are paying lower wages.

Mr Bradley warned the NHS was already losing staff to better-paid jobs, citing the example of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust that had seen staff move to an Amazon warehouse that opened nearby, despite paying the living wage.

The campaign, headed by Mr Bradley and the major’s office, aims for at least 75 per cent of NHS trusts in London to be accredited by next April.

In a statement, mayor Sadiq Khan said: “Our NHS and care staff do an incredible job to help Londoners and it’s important that everyone who plays a part in delivering that fantastic service is paid fairly.”

He said with the “spiralling” cost of living it was more important than ever to ensure people earn enough to afford essentials.

Colenzo Thorpe, Unite union’s national officer for health, said far too many NHS workers were not getting a real living wage, which was a “huge concern because the cost-of-living crisis is not abating”.

He said the issue was mainly because of outsourcing, privatisation and commercialisation, and urged NHS employers to “do the right thing” by bringing them back in-house.

Mr Thorpe also warned about ethnic inequalities, highlighting that a large proportion of outsourced staff was of black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.

‘It’s not just nurses’

It comes as tens of thousands of non-clinical staff are set to vote on strike action over pay this month.

Abby, a research assistant for a London hospital, told The Independent she was struggling to live in the city despite earning above the London living wage.

She said: “I have voted to strike. I’m at the top of my pay scale for band four [but] I’ve been at the top of that since 2014. I’ve had nothing, nothing to go up to.

“If I’m struggling, what are these poor people that are on even lower money than me? And, you know, without us all, the cogs don’t turn in the NHS. I mean, everyone’s talking about nurses and nurses, but it’s not just nurses in the NHS.”

Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive at NHS Providers, said while the number of accredited living wage employers had risen by 12 per cent since January, with a further 28 per cent to implement it soon, there were funding challenges to meet the shortfall between national pay awards and the real living wage.

“National pay awards should be set at a level whereby all NHS staff earn above the real living wage. This year, they received below-inflation pay awards for 2022-23, the real terms impact of which is compounded by a decade of below-inflation pay.”

The Department of Health and Social Care said the government has not committed the NHS to be a real living wage employer.