Evening Standard Comment: Nurses pay rise balancing act | Festivals are back!

Nurses in England have been offered a three per cent pay rise, backdated to April 2021, following the recommendation of the NHS independent pay review body.

This follows a 2018 deal, where more than one million NHS staff, including nurses, received a three-year pay deal worth 6.5 per cent.

Three per cent is clearly a significant improvement on the Government’s initial and tone-deaf 1 per cent offer this spring, given the extraordinary sacrifices our NHS staff have made.

At the time, we called on the Government to match the one-off payments provided by the devolved administrations as an immediate thanks for our health workers’ extraordinary service.

Such a move would have been better politics, avoided an outcry and another U-turn. And given them space to balance the books. Instead, this announcement will only heighten the Chancellor’s balancing act with regard to public sector pay restraint as our borrowing hit the highest ever on record last month at £8.7 billion.

Why will teachers not soon be the rallying cry?

This weekend, many thousands are packing their tents and flocking to Latitude Festival.

As a government test event, it is another chance to prove that testing, vaccination and virtually anything outdoors is the safest way to have a bit of the old fun back.

Let’s hope the weather holds.