Hard-up angels ‘turn to foodbanks’ as Tory pay cap bites

SKINT NHS nurses are relying on foodbanks because the value of their pay has nosedived.

Nurse Vicky Brotherton made the claim as the Royal College of Nursing launched a campaign to get Theresa May to lift the 1% cap on public sector pay. She and fellow RCN council member Lors Alford wrote to a local newspaper: “Some take second jobs and use foodbanks.”

Vicky, who works at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, Devon, and Lors added: “Without our members going the extra mile every day, working beyond their shifts and missing breaks, patients would not get care they need.

“Please support our campaign and call for the Government to scrap the cap so we can continue to be there for the patients who need us. Many nurses are

getting involved in a ‘summer of protest’ to give the Prime Minister a final chance to remove the cap.

“Your readers may well see us as we undertake this and we hope they will support our aims. Without nursing staff, the NHS would not survive.” They say frontline nurses “rarely feel the need to get involved in politics“.

However the letter concludes: “We get on with doing the job we were trained to do. But we now find ourselves in a situation that can no longer be tolerated.”