We are fully into the festive season, one of my favourite times of year. It is a time to spend with loved ones, and also for reflection.
For me, I have been reflecting on how grateful I feel for the opportunity to lead the RCN and represent the voice of nursing – it is an honour and responsibility that I feel thankful for every day. And this week we saw, once again, the importance of advocating for our profession with news that the UK government has submitted its evidence to the Pay Review Body for 2025/26, and suggested a pay increase of just 2.8% for nursing staff.
We have been clear that a 2.8% pay increase is deeply offensive to nursing staff, detrimental to patients and counterproductive to hopes of rebuilding the NHS. We are also clear that the proposed figure proves the need for direct pay negotiations. We pulled out of the Pay Review Body process, alongside other unions, because it is not the route to address the current crisis. That has been demonstrated this week.
It’s time to start doing things differently and nursing staff can add their own voices by signing our open letter, which calls on MPs in England to support direct negotiations to address fair pay in the NHS. We need to open direct talks now to avoid further escalation to disputes and ballots – and I have said this directly to the UK government.
Ministers also need to understand their decisions on pay have consequences that reach far beyond the wage packets of staff. New universities admissions figures from UCAS show that acceptances onto nursing courses increased just 0.6% between 2023 and 2024 – that puts NHS reforms under direct threat. If the UK government wants to transform care, it has to transform nursing. And that means removing financial barriers to training including introducing loan forgiveness and improving financial support for those in education.
Today is also Universal Health Coverage Day – a timely reminder of the importance of our National Health Service, the access to health care that it affords us, and the importance of maintaining it. Investing in nursing is a clear route to doing that.
Health is a fundamental human right, but half of the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services, and almost a quarter faces financial hardship due to out-of-pocket health spending.
Governments across the world are off track to make the necessary progress towards universal health coverage by 2030. Worryingly, the World Health Organisation estimates the world will face a shortage of 4.5 million nurses by 2030 and low and lower-middle income countries face the worst of these shortfalls.
In 2020, the UK Government announced a ‘temporary’ reduction in Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the United Nations target of 0.7% of gross national income to just 0.5%. Our analysis has shown that the impact of those cuts has had a detrimental impact on the UK’s commitments to international development and global health. The cuts have resulted in a £1.3 billion reduction to the UK’s ODA health spending alone since 2021.
For many countries, a lack of investment is also compounded by the loss of nurses and other essential health workers amidst high levels of international recruitment to the UK health and care workforce. There is an urgent need for the new UK Government to restore the UK’s spending target. Without increased commitment, the UK cannot provide the much-needed global leadership to address the global health workforce crisis and drive forward progress towards universal health coverage.
The importance of global leadership was made evident last week by the deeply concerning reports circulating that the Taliban has banned women from nursing and midwifery education in Afghanistan. We stand alongside the international community to implore Taliban authorities to place the health needs of their population at the forefront of their decision-making and reverse this catastrophic decision.
Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with one woman dying from preventable causes every two hours during pregnancy, childbirth or its aftermath. Access to health is already a precarious situation and this move marks a further step backwards for women and girls across the country.
Finally, last week I attended an event for the Royal Red Cross, at RCN HQ in London. The event was an inaugural meeting for some recipients of the Royal Red Cross award – a most prestigious honour for exceptional service in military nursing. The Royal Red Cross was created by Queen Victoria in 1883 and Florence Nightingale was one of the first recipients of the award. It also has strong links with the RCN, with Dame Sarah Swift and Sydney Browne as previous recipients. It was a fitting event to end the year with – remembering the brilliant work that our profession does, every day, in exceptional circumstances.
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