Striking nurses hit out at health secretary’s ‘nonsense’ claims patients would suffer from pay rise

NHS staff were cheered on by ongoing vehicles as they gathered outside the Prime Minister’s door demanding an adequate pay rise

Striking nurses have accused the health secretary of speaking “nonsense” after he warned patients would suffer if they were given a pay rise.

Health workers on a protest march to Downing Street argued that if the government has “billions of pounds to waste” on the Track and Trace app and useless PPE - they can help hard-working NHS staff.

It comes after Steve Barclay told the Independent any boost to wages would “take billions of pounds away from where we need it most”.

Nursing staff and supporters chant and wave placards outside University College Hospital (Getty)

Health workers outside University College London Hospital calling for the Prime Minister to “wake up” (Mustafa Qadri)

“Unaffordable pay hikes will mean cutting patient care and stoking the inflation that would make us all poorer,” he added.

But the argument was given short shrift during walkouts on Wednesday, with one nurse branding Mr Barclay's statement as “talking through his a***.”

Darragh O’Neill, from Charing Cross Hospital, said: “For 106 years we have not been on strike and now they are going to stop us and give themselves a pay rise at the same time. I've never heard such rubbish in all my life,” he said.

“The problem is they have already put the problem in place, by not paying us properly and people haemorrhaging from the system, and they're trying to say that this is what's causing it. It's got nothing to do with this.”

“Why isn't that money going back into the NHS? Because the Tories are giving backhanders to one another, all over the place, it is b*******.”

Darragh O’Neill (left) accused the health secretary of ‘talking through his a***’ (Mustafa Qadri)

Another NHS worker on the protest march from London’s UCL Hospital to No 10 referred to Mr Barclay’s claims as “nonsense that doesn’t require a response.”

“I work in an acute hospital, and every shift does not have enough nurses,” he said. “They've also spent the last four or five years working incredibly hard through the covid crisis too.

“It's been a challenging time. And compared to other people, their incomes have fallen the wealthier have earned more, and nurses less.”

Steve Barclay claims increasing nurses' pay would have harmful consequences towards patients (PA)

Health workers were greeted with cheers from the public as they made their way to Downing Street on Wednesday, the first day of a two-day walkout.

Royal College of Nursing members at more than 55 NHS trusts across England are taking part in industrial action in a bitter “cost-of-living” pay dispute.

The march was organised jointly by campaign groups NHS Workers Say No! and NHS Staff Voices which are part of the Keep Our NHS Public campaign.

Holly Turner, nurse and member of NHS Workers Say No! showed her support at the picket line and spoke outside Downing Street.

One nurse had a message for the Tories written on their scrubs (Mustafa Qadri)

Speaking to The Independent she responded to Steve Barclay’s claims saying: “if they have got the money when they want to blow billions of pounds on dodgy PPE, they have got enough to keep people safe, we are having 500 excess deaths a day, absolute shame on this government.”

The child and adolescent mental health nurse raised her concerns about nurses having to leave the NHS while children with mental health issues face waiting up to two years for an initial check-up.

“We are running on such short staffing, 40,000 nurses left in the NHS, and we run on a shortage of 135,000 staff,” she said. “When you are talking about a five-year child that is not safe when they are suffering from severe mental health difficulties and it is the same across the wards, ICU nurses are being forced to look after more patients and the ratio is not what it should be at all.”

Holly Turner said the current level of excess deaths was a shame on the government (Mustafa Qadri)

Nurse Esther Dixon, 28, said: “The government is saying anything to keep the power they have over the staff and nurses at the moment.

“If they can put millions of pounds into a useless covid app for example, if they can find the money to put into all the different funds they chose to look after their benefits, they can find some money to pay for nurses.”

Esther Dixon - right - said she feels ashamed of the care nurses are giving (Mustafa Qadri)

“As a nurse on the floor every day I feel guilty, I’m ashamed of the care we are giving, it is poor standards and I am really worried about the future of staffing for nursing,” she said.

“The work conditions are horrendous, very difficult to get through any shifts we do. On every shift we arrive at, there is more than half the staff not there because there are no nurses employed by the trust.

“My colleagues can't feed their families easily. It is just not tempting for anyone to stay in their job, so we are haemorrhaging staff.”