According to reports, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth is to announce the new measures in a speech today that would see a Labour government lift the 1% cap on pay rises for NHS staff, and move towards public sector wages being agreed through collective bargaining and the evidence of independent pay review bodies. 

Labour would also legislate to require NHS trusts to have regard for patient safety when setting staffing levels.

While welcoming the commitment to patient safety these measures would bring, recruiters have expressed concerns they could also kill off innovation in terms of trusts seeking more innovative solutions to resourcing problems, while also raising questions over how such pay rises could be paid for.

Barry Pactor, group managing director at ttm Healthcare, while welcoming Labour’s plans told Recruiter he would worry about how the health service would be able to afford these changes. 

He said there would be an impact on additional staffing that would be required in the short term “when there is such a significant shortage right now … exacerbated by Brexit and the shortfall in training numbers”. “Some of these plans will go some way to fixing this in the future but in the short term, solutions are required.”

Meanwhile, Claire Billenness, MD at HCL Workforce, told Recruiter NHS trusts already make extensive use of the “break glass” mechanism at their disposal, which enables trusts to make use of agencies to ensure safe staffing, while the rules of supply and demand continue to apply.

She added cost pressures have caused trusts to be innovative about resourcing solutions. “What trusts are doing is they are looking at innovative ways to the way they are staffing wards and units. They are looking at new roles – nurse associates, nurse practitioner roles. 

“The biggest challenge the NHS faces are the constraints around the contracts through which people are employed and that’s really down to the Royal Colleges to actually say what people can and can’t do within their remit.

“They’ve worked out it is a much better approach to have prescribing pharmacists rather than having to rely on junior doctors to write prescriptions for people who are waiting to leave hospital. Chances are a pharmacist is probably better qualified and better experienced to be able to prescribe medicines for people to go home with.

“The pressure that government is putting on hospitals is making them rethink the way they deliver services for a modern world, as opposed to the way things were always done in the past.”

Also commenting on Labour’s plans, Candace Imison, director of policy at health think tank Nuffield Trust, said it was good to see staffing issues recognised by Labour as one of the biggest challenges currently facing the NHS.

“The seven years of pay restraint endured by NHS staff have led to nurses seeing a 14% real-term reduction in their wages since 2010, and we know that applications for nursing courses from mature students, who have valuable life skills to offer the health service, have fallen since bursaries for nursing courses were abolished.

“However, both these pledges potentially come with significant price tags for which Labour will have to commit extra funding, or else the NHS simply won’t be able to afford the staff it already has.”

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