Act now to reward our NHS heroes

Nursing is a job like no other. It can go from rewarding to upsetting, fulfilling to depressing, joyful to backbreaking in a matter of minutes. And that was before nurses were asked to fight a life-and-death struggle against Covid-19.

Ever more was demanded of them – although there are 43,000 too few of them.

Day and night, nurses go about their vocation with quiet fortitude, whether lifting spirits or emptying bedpans.

Yesterday they turned up the volume. Healthcare workers took to Britain’s streets. They marched on Downing Street. They clamoured for the pay rise that is their due.

It is a cause the Sunday Mirror continues to champion. Along with Jeremy Corbyn. And even many Tory MPs.

Nurses cannot live on vocation alone.

Yet ministers close their eyes and cover their ears. They expect nurses to give their all and then a little bit extra. But they give nothing extra to the nurses.

CHAOS

Boris Johnson praises the nurses who saw him through his darkest corona days.

The PM should put government money where his mouth is.

His failure to get a sure grip on the pandemic means nurses may once again be asked to put their lives on the line.

Independent SAGE chairman Sir David King warns today of another national lockdown in September unless the track-and-trace mess and mixed-message chaos is sorted.

He says a surge in infections is inevitable when schools return and the Government is ill-prepared for it. That could turn a surge into a second wave worse than the first.

And we will be looking again to our healthcare workers to pick up the pieces.

We know that the pay rise they should have now will be deserved even more then.

That is why, if Mr Johnson values nurses as much as he says, he should act fast – by beginning the pay talks he must hold anyway in September, a month early.

Because by then NHS workers could have their hands full saving the lives of those they always put first.