Nurses are furious with Theresa May’s claim that giving them a pay rise would be spending money on “this, that and the other”.
The Prime Minister made the comment in the Commons this afternoon, after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn urged her to end the public sector pay cap and “ensure our NHS staff are properly paid?”
After praising the work of public sector employees, May replied: “What we have seen from what he does inside this House and outside is consistently stand up and ask for more money to spent on this, that and the other.”
As the exchange was going taking place, hundreds of nurses descended on Parliament for a Scrap the Cap protest.
When HuffPost UK told the protestors about May’s comment, their reaction was a mixture of astonishment and anger.
Labour MP Clive Lewis took around ten nurses from the protest into Parliament, and they reacted with gasps when HuffPost UK told them about May’s comments.
“It’s disgraceful,” said one nurse, while another added: “It’s really nice to hear that the Prime Minister thinks of us nurses as ‘this, that and the other’. She wouldn’t be calling us that if we were looking after her family.”
Lewis said the words show “how out of touch she is with the reality of these nurses’ lives. Not just nurses, but teachers and other public sector employees.”