To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to abolish the one per cent cap on pay rises for nurses.
Answered on
7 March 2017
The pay cap applies across the public sector not just to nurses working in the National Health Service.
At summer budget 2015 the Government announced a four year public sector pay cap at an average of 1% from 2016/17 to 2019/20. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that this policy will protect 200,000 public sector jobs overall by the end of this Parliament. The Government has no plans to remove the public sector pay cap.
Average earnings for qualified nurses (including midwives) were £31,214 in the 12 months to June 2016, a slight increase from the same time in 2015 and similar to the £31,189 figure for the NHS as a whole, which remains well above the national average salary for 2015 of £27,500 a year.
The NHS is one of few in the public sector that operate incremental pay systems. Around half of the nursing workforce is eligible for incremental pay of around 3% on average. A typical nurse employed under Agenda for Change at pay band 5 is eligible for seven years of incremental pay equivalent to 3.8% per year on average on top of annual pay awards.