While we continue to wait impatiently for Mike Nesbitt to publish the strategic plan he said would come in “the immediate weeks” following Professor Rafael Bengoa’s latest visit - which happened more than a month ago - there are worrying signs that the health service is edging closer to the cliff edge.
The latest entirely predictable crisis surrounds pay, an issue which led to strike action in 2019 and again last year. Mr Nesbitt says he doesn’t have enough money to give health and social care staff pay rises of at least 5.5% to match awards given to their counterparts in Britain.
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The health minister puts this down to his department being £100 million short of the necessary cash, even after it was given an extra £350m in this week’s monitoring round which distributed a £631.5m pot for day to day spending.
Mr Nesbitt is continuing to adopt the curious - and perhaps unsustainable - position of being a Stormont minster who is content to remain a member of the Executive while berating that same Executive for how it allocates its money.
Continually pumping ever greater sums of money into the Department of Health cannot be the long-term answer. The nettle of reform has remained ungrasped for far too long
This might infuriate his ministerial colleagues from the other parties but it won’t do him any harm with health and social care workers. He said he “could not in all conscience” support a cash allocation which broke pay parity: “I could not look health service workers in the eye and say I had put my name to pay funding that will be lower than England and Wales.”
Dr David Farren, chair of the BMA’s Northern Ireland Consultant Committee, said it would be an “utter disaster” if pay deals couldn’t be met. “This winter will be challenging enough already, not paying staff their worth would just be rubbing salt in the wounds,” he said.
Denise Kelly, who chairs the RCN Trade Union Committee, said that as frontline nurse “I know exactly how this feels - it’s extremely demoralising”. “It’s a slap in the face, to be undervalued for the work we do,” she said.
Although going on strike was “always an absolute last resort”, Ms Kelly stressed that “if we have to in order to get our members what they need and stand up for patients, we’ll use it”.
The Unison trade union, which represents 27,000 workers, says that strike action is “inevitable” without a pay rise.
These are grave warnings which the Executive must take seriously and seek to urgently address. However, continually pumping ever greater sums of money into the Department of Health cannot be the long-term answer. The nettle of reform has remained ungrasped for far too long. Mr Nesbitt needs to get on with it.
