On Wednesday afternoon, around 100 demonstrators, including many nurses, marched in protest to Downing Street in central London.
“If we don’t make it a more attractive job, we’re not going to recruit enough nurses,” said another protester, 26-year-old care assistant Fiona Boxford, who intends to train as a nurse. Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has insisted recession-hit Britain cannot afford to reopen public sector pay already set for this fiscal year, which ends on March 31.“Unaffordable pay hikes will mean cutting patient care and stoking the inflation that would make us all poorer,” health minister Steve Barclay wrote in The Independent on Wednesday.
Despite the disruption, the nurses’ plight has prompted public sympathy amid broad discontent over the government’s management of the NHS.“We go to work every day as nurses and we do our best, and our best isn’t enough right now, and that’s because our workload keeps increasing and our resources aren’t matching that,” said Accident and Emergency nurse Orla Dooley, 29.