RCN director Tom Sandford said: ‘The DoH has a lot of explaining to do to both patients and healthcare workers.
‘How can they justify a record financial surplus of £1.8 billion when they’ve forced job losses and service cuts across the NHS over recent years?
‘This news comes at a time when nurses have had to take a paltry pay offer from a Government who are reliant upon the hard work and commitment of frontline staff to deliver reform. It is absolutely essential that every penny left over from this underspend is reinvested in frontline patient services and staff.’
The projected underspend, more than three times the value of the underspend for 2006/7, was calculated by the Health Service Journal.
nick.bostock@haymarket.com
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