BBCThe Welsh government has announced above inflation pay rises for public sector workers.
Nurses, other NHS staff and teachers will get a 5.5% award, while doctors and dentists will receive 6%, all in line with England.
Officials are confident they will get extra cash from the UK government to pay for the rises.
First Minister Eluned Morgan said the deals will be worth £500m and said the rises – which are backdated to April – had taken longer than hoped to confirm “because we needed to be sure that we can afford this”.
She told BBC Wales: “I have been on a listening exercise throughout Wales over the summer, and time and time again people have told us to respect and look after our public services.
“In order to do that, we’ve got to appreciate that it’s the people who work in those services that need to be supported.”
The Welsh government said it was accepting the recommendations of independent pay bodies in full for 2024-25 – the current financial year.
Junior doctors will also get an additional £1,000, and there will be an average pay award of 5% at a number of other public bodies, including Natural Resources Wales and the Development Bank of Wales.
Officials said the teachers award was higher than the 4.3% recommended by the Welsh pay body and is in line with the English award, on the basis that there should be no detriment to Welsh teachers from decisions made by the UK government.
The awards will need to be approved by the trade unions, some of which have been in dispute with the Welsh government in recent years. A four-week consultation will now start on teacher’s pay.
The current rate of consumer price inflation stands at 2.2%.
How will it be paid for?
It comes after the UK government approved the recommendations of public sector pay bodies in the summer.
The Welsh government gets most of its money from the UK government. Officials are confident they will get cash off the back of extra funding for pay in England, helping to avoid cuts to funding elsewhere as a result.
Initially officials were unable on Tuesday morning to provide a figure for how much the Welsh government expects the pay rises to cost.
But in an interview Eluned Morgan said: “It’s not an insignificant amount of money. We’re talking about £500m. Most of that will come as a result of UK government handing that money over to us.
“We’ve said we will keep that as a ring fence to pay these additional sums.”
She said the cash to pay for the rises will not be coming from existing budgets.
“We’ve taken the summer just to bolt everything down, just to make sure that we can afford this, and that’s why we’ve taken perhaps a little longer than some people had hoped.”
Journalists were told on Tuesday that enough is known about what the Treasury might have to give UK government departments to make an estimate of what Wales was going to get.
This will be to fund the difference between what pay was initially expected to rise by – 3.5% – and the now planned increases.
Welcome from unions
The news was given a cautious welcome by the headteachers’ union, NAHT Cymru.
Laura Doel said: “While we understand the award will be fully-funded, we will be examining the detail with a microscopic lens to ensure all costs are covered for all schools, not just average costs.”
She criticised the 4.3% proposed by the Welsh pay body. She said it would have been “hugely damaging and demoralising for our members to be seen as being somehow worth less than their counterparts in England.”
BMA Cymru Wales, which represents doctors, broadly welcomed the rise for junior doctors, consultants and specialists.
It said the announcement provided “further reversal” of pay erosion for junior doctors.
However it said pay rises for GPs “cannot be realised” until contract negotiations begin, which it said the Welsh government had delayed.
TUC Cymru general secretary Shavanah Taj said: “Progress on public sector pay is strongly welcomed, as is the fact that these pay awards are above inflation and match what was offered by the UK government to workers in England.”
But reflecting on the lateness of the award, she added: We have stressed to government how important it is to avoid a delay like this in future.”
‘Wales should not have to wait’
Leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Welsh Parliament Andrew RT Davies, said: “It’s clearly in the UK’s national interest to end these strikes, but Labour ministers in the Senedd allowed them to drag on. Unlike Labour ministers in the Senedd, Welsh Conservatives will never prioritise vanity projects that distract from our public services.”
Plaid Cymru’s Heledd Fychan added: “We’re clear that public sector workers in Wales should not have to wait for announcements in England before receiving improved pay offers.
“That’s why we urgently need a fair funding model to end Wales’ dependency on political decisions made over the border.”
