...one of the most notable interventions has come from Sir Jake Berry, who was chairman of the Conservative party when Liz Truss was prime minister and before that chair of the Northern Research Group, the influential caucus for “red wall” Tory MPs. In an interview with TalkTV last night, Berry said the government should offer the nurses a better deal. He said:
"The government is going to have to improve its offer. The nursing union itself is asking for 19%. That does not seem like a realistic figure to people working in the private sector, to people working in other parts of our public sector.
They’ve described it themselves as a negotiating position. And we all know how this works. They ask for 19%, the government offers them 3 or 4, or whatever it is, and they’re going to meet somewhere in the middle. We need to find a way, as a government, and the union too, to get to that centre point, that point of agreement, straight away. Both the government and the nurses’ union need to come up together [with] a compromise position straight away. And that has to involve the government increasing its offer."
Wasn't the barristers strike settled at 15% earlier this year?
Are NHS staff worth less?