Will Tories rue peer’s sneers on nurses’ pay?

Labour’s pledge to put No 10’s planned 1 per cent pay rise for nurses at the heart of its local election campaign could mean that one well-heeled minister’s nonchalant dismissal of the nurses’ case will come back to haunt the Government.

‘There are many people in this country who look upon professional jobs in the NHs with some envy,’ Health Minister Lord bethell said last week. ‘Nurses are well paid for the job. They have a secure job and they have other benefits.’

Is bethell, a hereditary peer, the right man to talk about nurses’ pay? He lives with his venture capitalist wife Melissa Wong in a four-storey house in Notting Hill, which cost £6.3 million in 2011, but has since doubled in value. What’s more, they have a swish holiday home in Majorca.

bethell’s wife earned millions at blue-chip investment firm bain Capital, where she was MD until 2017. she has also worked for Goldman sachs, the bank once famously described by rolling stone magazine as ‘a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money’.

Lady b also has a clutch of directorships with companies including Tesco and Diageo.

Newly qualified nurses, meanwhile, earn just £24,907 a year. boris Johnson is said to be considering a one-off bonus for nurses to supplement the offer on the table, but it would have to be pretty hefty to stop NHs angels from looking upon the bethells ‘with some envy’.