Around 3,000 nurses, student nurses, health care workers and supporters took part in the 90-minute rally in Parliament Square, opposite the Houses of Parliament.
The rally was organized as part of the Royal College of Nursing’s “Scrap the Cap” campaign, which calls on the Government to remove the 1% cap on NHS pay.
In his Facebook page Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn expressed his support to the “thousands of nurses who demand their first pay rise in seven years. Theresa May has no problem finding £1 billion for the DUP, but won’t raise wages for the underpaid nurses and healthcare staff, some of whom are forced to use food banks to get by” he added.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “The Tory Government has taken NHS staff for granted for years and the result is staffing shortages across the health service and ever longer waits for patients. 72 per cent of the public now think that there are too few nurses to provide safe care to patients. This is totally unsustainable. The Government’s public sector pay cap has created a workforce crisis in the NHS which is driving trust deficits and causing misery for patients.”
