Need to end NHS pay stagnation in Northern Ireland says midwives post Budget

By RCM on 24 November 2017 Midwife Shortage Northern Ireland Pay and Agenda For Change

In Wednesday's Budget the Chancellor pledged to fund the recommendations on NHS pay that the NHS Pay Review Body will make for midwives and other NHS staff and also committed additional funds for the NHS in England.

Commenting on the announcement, Breedagh Hughes, Director for Northern Ireland at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Northern Ireland’s midwives and other NHS staff and public sector workers remain in a pay limbo because of the political stasis in Northern Ireland.

“No one in the public sector has had a pay award for 2017/18 on top of years of pay freezes and pay stagnation. This is seeing staff even worse off here than their colleagues in the rest of the UK, and this is not good enough.

“Our politicians must set aside differences and form a Government so that we can invest in our hard working NHS staff and other public sector workers, and so we can start to address the growing concerns I have about the pressures on maternity services and the lack of staff and resources to meet those demands.”

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