Nurses are threatening to strike during the flu-crisis winter months if their salary cap isn’t ‘genuinely lifted’

NURSES are threatening strike action over pay during the flu-crisis winter months, it has emerged.

Union chiefs indicated last night that industrial action is being lined up for the cold snap if their salary cap isn’t “genuinely lifted”.

Philip Hammond has been warned he must “not play with fire” and offer a pay rise above increases in the “cost of living” with additional money in the Budget.

The Royal College of Nursing are furious the government has refused to confirm the NHS pay review body can give workers a pay rise.

The intervention comes days after NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said avoiding a winter flu crisis was now “the top priority for every part of the NHS” as Britain faces a “more pressurised” flu season.

The move from the nurses’ union comes after leading health unions wrote to the Chancellor demanding a 3.9 per cent rise plus a £800 bonus.

Any industrial action would follow a legal ballot and ensure emergency cover.

Ministers this week announced the police would receive a 2 per cent boost and prison officers a 1.7 per cent rise, lifting the 1 per cent pay cap.

Unions say health workers’ pay has fallen by 15 per cent in the past seven years once inflation is taken into account.

Downing Street has said ministers are ready to allow flexibility over public sector pay for 2018/19.

Josie Irwin, Head of Employment Relations at the Royal College of Nursing, said: “A week of smoke and mirrors left frontline NHS workers even more angry and confused.

“The Government must not play with fire - if the pay cap is not genuinely lifted by November’s Budget, we could see industrial action in the NHS this winter.

“With tough months ahead for hospitals, the Government needs to be doing all it can to prepare the NHS. It would be a highly irresponsible move by Ministers to inflict another pay cut.

“If the NHS is forced to cut patients services to fund the increase, the NHS will only struggle even more.

The Government must provide truly additional money for a pay rise that goes above increases in the cost of living.

“If nurses do not feel valued, the staffing shortage will bite ever harder. The impact on patients is being

felt long before industrial action.”