Nurses have voted to reject the Government’s pay uplift of 5.5 per cent.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) announced the results of a vote on pay as Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, addressed the Labour Party conference on Monday.

The RCN said two-thirds of its members voted against the pay award for 2024-25 in a record high turnout of 145,000.

Nurses will still get the uplift next month, which will be backdated to April, and the union would have to reballot its members to take any form of industrial action.

The RCN has been in a pay dispute with the Government since 2022, but did not pass the threshold required to continue striking in a second ballot after staging walkouts throughout the winter of 2022-23.

It also rejected the pay increase given to all NHS staff last year, and was the only health service union to vote against the uplift this time around, almost two months after it was first announced.

The RCN said the number voting in its consultation on the pay award was higher than its 2022 and 2023 ballots on industrial action.

‘Our members do not yet feel valued’

In a letter to Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, Prof Nicola Ranger, the RCN general secretary, said nurses wanted “urgent action”.

“We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the determination of nursing staff to stand up for themselves, their patients and the NHS they believe in,” she wrote.

“To raise standards and reform the NHS, you need safe numbers of nursing staff, and they need to feel valued. Nursing staff were asked to consider if, after more than a decade of neglect, they thought the pay award was a fair start. This outcome shows their expectations of Government are far higher.

“Our members do not yet feel valued and they are looking for urgent action, not rhetorical commitments. Their concerns relate to understaffed shifts, poor patient care and nursing careers trapped at the lowest pay grades.”

The union argues that the pay of an experienced nurse fell by 25 per cent in real terms under the Conservatives between 2010 and 2024.

Extra £1,500 a year

The Government accepted the NHS Pay Review Body’s recommendation for all NHS staff in England on Agenda for Change contracts to receive a 5.5 per cent rise this financial year.

It means newly-qualified nurses on a band five salary will take home an extra £1,500 a year, up to just short of £30,000, which would rise after two years of service.

The announcement followed a vote last week by resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, to accept a 22 per cent multi-year pay rise to end their strikes.

Members of the British Medical Association voted by two-thirds in favour of the deal, which included the Government agreeing to change the job title assigned to the profession.

The RCN announcement came as Ms Reeves finished her speech to Labour members in Liverpool on Monday, where she was also interrupted by a pro-Palestinian heckler.