NHS pay demands are unwarranted; nurses are well rewarded – Yorkshire Post Letters

REGARDING nurses’ pay (Andrew Vine, The Yorkshire Post, March 9), let me first say that I believe that they do a magnificent job, but in my opinion are well rewarded for it.

After training on about £19,000 p.a. newly-qualified nurses go to pay band five on just short of £25,000 a year. After yearly increments during seven years or so service, they enter band six at about £33,000+ per annum.

These rates are well above the average working wage, and if they have to work nights, weekends or bank holidays, pay is enhanced by between 30 and 60 per cent and, London pay rates are higher. They also have very good holidays and pensions.

However we have been told to ‘protect’ the NHS during the pandemic, so many well- meaning folks falling ill with non-Covid symptoms have suffered and maybe died for the lack of adequate treatment because they mistakenly did so, and stayed away, when they ought to have been ‘protected’ by the NHS themselves…no less because they could hardly get to see a GP.

It would appear that the public believe that nurses are woefully underpaid and support claims for a massive and unaffordable 15 per cent pay rise, and that the Tory ‘nasty’ party is being deliberately mean. No other public sector workers have had a rise.

It could also be that whilst ‘we’ all support the nurses and value what they do, it would not go down well if ‘we’ also believe that the multi-layered and overweight NHS bureaucracy should not have the same pay treatment.

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

I CAN well understand the anger of our faithful NHS over the pitiful one per cent pay rise offer. When you consider the money pit that is HS2, it is clear nurses will disbelieve the Government when it says that one per cent is all it can afford.

But what about police officers and prison staff who are getting nothing? If the Government took a step back and stopped wasting money on grandiose schemes like HS2, they could afford to reward those deserving of rises.

From: Peter Rickaby, Selby.

WHAT would those who work for the NHS prefer – a secure job with a pension or a wage increase whilst those on “furlough” pay the price with neither income or employment?

From: Sam Willmott, Bingley.

HOW about the monarchy becoming self-sufficient so its funding can be towards better pay for NHS staff? I know who I value for more – and it’s not the House of Windsor.

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