NHS staff 'leaving to work in supermarkets due to low pay'

Low pay is leading NHS staff to quit the service and stack shelves in supermarkets instead, hospital bosses say.

NHS Providers, which represents almost all of England's 240 NHS hospitals, said the government's pay cap, which limits pay rises in the health service to 1 per cent a year until 2019, was "wrong" and "damaging the service by deepening its already severe staff shortages", says The Guardian.

The group also claims the pay cap is leading staff to leave the NHS and find work elsewhere, leaving patients at risk due to an increase in staff shortages, which is "now the main problem facing the health service".

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In 2016, the public accounts committee claimed NHS England was short of around 50,000 staff to operate fully - about six per cent of the workforce, according to the BBC.

Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: "Significant numbers of trusts say lower-paid staff are leaving to stack shelves in supermarkets rather than carry on with the NHS.

"Years of pay restraint and stressful working conditions are taking their toll," he continued. "Pay restraint must end and politicians must therefore be clear about when during the lifetime of the next parliament it will happen and how."

Financial incentives were not the only reason for a staff exodus, Hopson added. Many workers were leaving because they were "exhausted from having to work so constantly to keep up with the unprecedented demand for care", he said.

Hopson also repeated demands for an extra £25bn in government funding to ensure NHS trusts in England can function to their full potential until 2020.

NHS salaries will likely be one of the focal points of next month's general election. The Liberal Democrats and the Tories have yet to set out their plans, while Labour has promised it will look to increase pay across the service.

However, although the party "wants to increase pay so it better reflects the cost of living", says the BBC, it has not specified the size of the increase.