Government Agrees Pay Deal With NHS Workers To End Long-Running Dispute

The agreement comes after ministers made an improved offer to end strike action.
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Unions representing nurses and ambulance workers have struck a increased pay deal with the government.

Ministers have offered a lump sum payment this year and a 5% pay rise in 2023-24, in a bid to end the long running strikes.

The unions representing hundreds of thousands of health workers have been locked in talks with ministers all week to try to break the deadlock.

A spokesperson for the department for health and social care said the negotiations had been “constructive and meaningful” covering pay and non-pay matters.

The offer is an increase on a previously suggested rise of 3.5% for the next financial year from April.

The unions will have to ballot their members before the dispute ends, and would suspend future strikes while that happens.

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, earlier told Times Radio the government was willing to make a “more generous offer” to public sector workers as long as any settlement was not inflationary.

It came as strikes were held by teachers, university staff and railway workers in separate disputes over pay, jobs and conditions.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said the row which is disrupting train services is “stuck in a deadlock”.