Thousands join in nurses’ scrap the cap plea to MPs
MORE than 2,000 nurses from across the UK demonstrated against the 1% pay cap in a rally in Parliament Square yesterday.
The public sector pay cap has caused nurses’ wages to plummet in real terms by £3,000 – or 14% – since 2010.
Nurse Amina Ahmed, 34, told how she lives with her husband and four children in a one-bed flat in South East London.
She said: “When I get back from a 12-hour shift, it’s not fair we can’t afford to live somewhere that I’m able to get a good night’s sleep. We are professionals, but we are being taken for granted.”
Chris Edwards-Jones, 50, who works in a South Wales hospital said: “I have never known morale to be so low. Yes, we’re here because we can’t pay our mortgages, but also because we want to protect our patients and the NHS.”
As he spoke, Theresa May was taking her first Prime Minister’s Questions since MPs returned after summer. The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on her to end the pay cap, but she accused him of constantly demanding money for “this, that and the other”.
One nurse at the protest said: “It’s really nice to hear that the Prime Minister thinks of us as ‘this, that and the other’.
“She wouldn’t be calling us that if we were looking after her family.”
A No10 source later denied Mrs May’s comment had referred to the nurses.
We’re here because we want to protect patients and NHS
CHRIS EDWARD-JONES NURSE IN SOUTH WALES