Why do we spray Covid millions at everyone – but nurses?

LAST July, in that sunny lull between lockdowns, the Government jubilantly announced that the number of nurses employed by the NHS had increased by 13,502, rising from 282,506 to 296,008. The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, was delighted.

‘This pandemic has shown how proud the entire country is of all our brave health and care workers, and what an essential role they play in society,’ he said, adding: ‘We made the commitment of 50,000 more nurses by end of this Parliament, and I’m determined we will meet it.’

Matt, my love, I hate to be a partypooper, but if last week’s Budget is anything to go by I think you might struggle with that one. I know nursing is a vocation, and that peo- ple don’t go into it to get rich, but seriously. One per cent? That’s just rude.

Your average start- ing salary for a nurse is £24,907. And that’s after they’ve qualified.

It wasn’t enough before the pandemic struck, and it’s certainly not enough now.

EMY daughter pointed out to me the other day that she was 16 when we first went into lockdown, and she’ll be 18 by the time we finally emerge. From child to adult. A sobering thought.

SPECIALLY when we know that one of the big problems with hospital capacity is not so much lack of bed space (we had all those shiny new Nightingales lying empty), but with the number of ICU nurses qualified to administer critical care.

Quite why the Government has chosen this particular hill to die on is beyond me. You don’t have to be a genius political strategist to see that at a time when people have been lining up in the street to applaud ‘our NHS heroes’, one per cent is an act of spectacular self-harm.

I hate to say it but I’m afraid the nursing unions have a point (well, not entirely – some are demanding a 12.5 per cent pay rise, which is obviously bonkers): it’s just not good enough. Nor is it good enough to defend this derisory amount – which in most cases will amount to under a fiver a week – by saying: ‘It’s what we think we can afford.’

It seems to me that when it comes to Covid, we can afford whatever we want to afford. So why spray money at practically everyone except the one group of people who have made a truly invaluable contribution.

Especially when we’ve just had a Budget in which the Chancellor seems to have kicked muchanticipated plans for an online sales tax – which would have finally ensured that companies such as Amazon pay their fair share – into the long grass and extended the furlough scheme (which to date has cost almost £50 billion) for millions of people.

I’m not saying it’s not a necessary measure, but I’m sure there are plenty of footsore nurses who would love to spend the next five months at home on 80 per cent of their salaries, regrouting their bathrooms or, more likely, simply just having a nice long lie-down in a darkened room. But they can’t because they’ve got to be out there, tending to the sick and dying and, let’s not forget, risking contagion. Although they can now have the jab, and should. But still.

The other thing, of course, is that we don’t want nurses migrating to the private sector. Which they will if we don’t pay them enough. Because that means the NHS losing valued staff – and having to pay through the nose for agency nurses to make up the shortfall.

In Scotland, health and social care workers were promised a one-off bonus of £500 each last year, at a cost of approximately £180million. If the Government really doesn’t want to review the pay rise, it could do the same.

To extend something similar to NHS nurses alone would amount to slightly less than that, around £150 million.

Half, as it happens, of what Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, makes in a single day.