With all the money the government is pumping into the NHS, nurses might expect to find more of it in their pay packets. But, as Seamus Ward reports, the equation is not that simple

THESE ARE unprecedented times for health service finance. There have always been years when the NHS received large sums of money but these have been sand- wiched between long periods of annual spending increases that barely kept pace with inflation. Labour swept to power in 1997 and 2001 promising to put much more cash into the NHS, a promise it has so far kept, but with all this money swilling around, why are nurses still leaving the service complaining of low pay? And what are the chances of some of this extra cash finding its way into nurses' bank accounts?