ON INTERNATIONAL Nurses Day it is important to recognise the central role nurses play in running front-line NHS services and to acknowledge that their struggle for decent pay is central to the battle to stop the cuts and privatisation steamroller that threatens to destroy free healthcare for good.

Nurses of all grades contributed to the pandemic response and in London there was such a shortage of trained and experienced nurses that NHS trusts were forced to increase the bank pay rates in order to ensure that wards and units could deliver care. Nursing care was in such short supply that some doctors stepped in to fill the gap left by nursing shortages.

Student nurses who have had the terms and conditions of their training contracts eroded over several decades without so much as a whimper of opposition by the trade union movement, found themselves thrown in at the deep end delivering life-saving care for free in ICUs and other coronavirus areas. The student nurses were sold the familiar line that gaining “pandemic experience” is a more important consideration than pay. The student nurses  were also told that their families were not eligible for a death in service pay scheme even though they were risking their lives. Many became unwell and some, like Ade Raymond, died.