IEA Editorial and Research Fellow Professor Len Shackleton has written for CapX emphasising the need for NHS reform if the government is to prevent regular nurses strikes.

Len highlighted the difficulty of centrally planning nurses’ pay, writing:

“Yet in many ways it is an absurd task. The AfC grouping covers hundreds of different jobs in the NHS. Even in nursing there are many different types of nurse which have to be shoehorned into bands with different skills and qualifications.”

Len also lamented the lack of market forces involved in determining nurses pay, arguing:

“At the moment, and indeed ever since the inception of the NHS, we have what in effect is a giant monopsony. Nurses’ pay, like that of other public sector workers, is not determined by supply and demand in a competitive market. That is the reason why UK nurses are paid considerably less than their counterparts in the United States.”

The full article can be read here.