Conservative chairman of the Commons Health Committee Steve Brine has suggested that Ministers should reconsider an “elegant” way to end the NHS strikes.
Brine said it could be a good idea to go back to the independent review body as they had made the pay rise recommendation prior to the war starting in Ukraine which has severely hampered the economy.
Brine told the BBC’s World At One Programme, “Everyone needs to cool it and I think sending it back to the pay review body to have a look would be a sensible answer.”
He suggested this could well be a way for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to step back from next week’s action which could resolve the situation.
He was asked if this could resolve the strike situation, he replied, “I would agree. That’s the elegant way to make that movement.”
Jerry Cope, a former head of the independent review body said that Ministers as the group to rethink because the “world was a rather different place” when decisions were made, and “some of the evidence they considered was probably out of date by the time it was published.”
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, “That may be a possibility for a solution for this apparently intractable problem,”
“I think they (ministers) should ask the pay review body to reconsider what they did last year and not reopen last year because I think it’s too late to do that, but actually say I want you to do a very quick turnaround for this year’s recommendations and I want you to take account of anything you might have missed last time round.”
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