Hammond tells BBC viewers that ‘nurses had a 3.3% pay rise’ last year

The Chancellor told BBC Breakfast viewers that nurses and other healthcare staff received a 3.3% pay rise last year.

During a live BBC interview this morning Phillip Hammond told viewers that nurses and other ‘dedicated NHS staff’ received, on average, a 3.3 per cent pay rise last year – despite the 1 per cent public sector pay cap being in force until October 2017.

The news comes less than 24 hours after Hammond announced at yesterday’s budget that the Government are currently in talks with healthcare unions to review and ‘modernise’ the Agenda for Change pay structure.

Mr Hammond did, however, seem to confirm that any future pay deal would be fully funded and not come from existing NHS budgets.

During the live interview with BBC Breakfast this morning, Phillip Hammond said;

“Let me first of all tell you the facts.

“Last year nurses, on average, received pay rises of 3.3% across the board. Some got more, some got less – of course. But, we have removed the old blanket pay cap from the public sector and what we are doing accross the board now is looking at individual workforces, looking at recruitment and retention problems, looking at opportunities to improve the way workforces work and the way pay structures work.

“The Health Secretary is in negotiation with the health unions about a new pay structure for the national health service and I said yesterday that if those negotiations are successful and out of them comes a multi-year pay deal we will fund that.”

Despite ongoing negotiations with health unions, NHS staff will have to wait until the NHS Pay Review Body publishes its ‘independent’ report which is expected in March of 2018.