Former Tory chair Jake Berry says government should improve pay offer to nurses ‘by a lot’ – UK politics live

Read More

In his TalkTV interview last night Sir Jake Berry, the former Conservative chairman, also said that Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy PM, should be suspended from his cabinet post while the allegations about him bullying officials – there are now eight separate complaints, No 10 said yesterday – are investigated. Commenting on the latest developments in the story, he said:

The problem with this development is, if you work in Aldi in Rawtenstall or Asda in Rawtenstall in my constituency, and you had allegations like this against you, you would be suspended pending investigation.

And I think it’s quite a hard line from the government to maintain there are now eight allegations in relation to unacceptable behaviour in the workplace – which are denied by Dominic Raab – and they haven’t taken any further action than setting up some independent panel which I don’t think anybody, including me, really understands.

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have said Raab should stand aside while the allegations against him are investigated, and Berry said this was the approach he adopted to people under investigation when he was party chairman.

Good morning. Britain’s industrial dispute crisis has become notably more serious today with the start of a strike by nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Even in the 1970s the Royal College of Nursing never voted to go on strike, and so this is a measure of how badly the cost of living crisis is affecting the public sector workforce.

Many hospitals are not affected (nurses voted trust by trust, and in some places they did not reach the 50% turnout threshold for a ballot to be valid), but this is still a big motion – for the NHS, and patients – and my colleague Tobi Thomas is writing a separate liveblog with all the detail here.

I’ll be covering non-strike issues today, but it is impossible to write about Westminster politics without referencing the dispute and so it will get some coverage here too. And one of the most notable interventions has come from Sir Jake Berry, who was chairman of the Conservative party when Liz Truss was prime minister and before that chair of the Northern Research Group, the influential caucus for “red wall” Tory MPs. In an interview with TalkTV last night, Berry said the government should offer the nurses a better deal. He said:

The government is going to have to improve its offer.

The nursing union itself is asking for 19%. That does not seem like a realistic figure to people working in the private sector, to people working in other parts of our public sector.

They’ve described it themselves as a negotiating position. And we all know how this works. They ask for 19%, the government offers them 3 or 4, or whatever it is, and they’re going to meet somewhere in the middle.

We need to find a way, as a government, and the union too, to get to that centre point, that point of agreement, straight away.

Berry also said that nurses were “brilliant public servants” and that a compromise was essential. He went on:

Both the government and the nurses’ union need to come up together [with] a compromise position straight away. And that has to involve the government increasing its offer.

Asked by how much, Berry initially said “by a lot”, and then said he did not want to put a figure on it. But 19% was too high, he said.

Berry has become one of the most troublesome Tory backbenchers for No 10. He spoke out publicly about Rishi Sunak’s decision to give Gavin Williamson a cabinet job (successfully – Williamson resigned) and about his decision to reappoint Suella Braverman has home secretary (unsuccessfully – she is still there). He also joined a revolt over onshore windfarms (he was was in favour), and he has publicly speculated about the prospect of Boris Johnson returning to save the party from electoral oblivion.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Kemi Badenoch, the international trade secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Morning: Stephen Barclay, the health secretary, visits a London hospital, where he will speak to the media.

11.30am: Downing Street holds its lobby briefing.

At some point today Huw Merriman, the rail minister, is holding a meeting with the RMT about the strike.

Also, people are voting today in the byelection in Stretford and Urmston to elect a replacement for Labour’s Kate Green, who is leaving parliament to become Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing and crime.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions and, if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.