The UK Statistics Authority criticised a graph used by health secretary Steve Barclay’s department which showed “how nurses’ pay has gone up”.
It comes as NHS ambulance workers across England joined nurses in agreeing to strike before Christmas. Unison members voted in favour of strikes over pay and staffing levels.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said up to 100,000 nurses will stay off work on 15 and 20 December unless the government starts to engages with pay demands in detail.
As nurses continue to press for a pay hike of inflation plus 5 per cent, the statistics watchdog’s boss Sir Robert Chote said government claims on pay risked “damaging public confidence”.
In a letter to Labour’s shadow health minister Andrew Gwynne, first shared with The Mirror, Sir Robert criticised the “poor and misleading representation” of pay increase data.
One side of the infographic on pay started at around £20,000 rather than £0. The watchdog said this “exaggerates the proportionate increase” in salaries.
The watchdog also said that the “freehand way” in which lines were drawn “suggests a bigger relative increase in pay for newly qualified nurses… than the underlying data justify”.
Labour’s Mr Gwynne said: “The Conservatives have been caught red-handed using official government propaganda to gaslight nurses.”
Pat Cullen, the RCN’s general secretary, said the watchdog’s “damning” assessment “warrants an official response from Steve Barclay without delay”.
She added: “Ministers have been found out and need to come clean. A new and honest debate on nursing pay should show how experienced nurses have lost 20% in real terms in the last decade.”
On Tuesday the RCN set out details of where nurses would be going on strike in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. A separate pay offer has been made in Scotland.
Ms Cullen said she was disappointed that Mr Barclay and health ministers had “declined my offer of formal pay negotiations and instead chosen strike action”.
Mr Barclay has reiterated that unions’ pay demands are “not affordable”, after Unison announced that ambulance workers across England are also set to strike in December.
Unison said thousands of 999 call handlers, ambulance technicians, paramedics and their colleagues working for ambulance services in the north east, north west, London, Yorkshire and the south west are to be called out on strike.
“Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay must roll up their sleeves and start talking to unions about how better wages for staff can help start to turn the NHS around,” said Unison general secretary Christina McAnea.
The health secretary said he “deeply regretted” the industrial action, saying it was in “nobody’s best interests as we approach a challenging winter”.
He added: “Our economic circumstances mean unions’ demands are not affordable, each additional 1 per cent pay rise for all staff on the agenda for change contract would cost around £700 million a year.”
