In the course of the discussion Ms Cullen referred to “a nurse on £27,000 a year living in Central London”.  The ECU noted that this did not include an uplift for London weighting (referred to as a High Cost Area Supplement by the NHS), the minimum supplement for nurses in inner London being £4,888 per year, and agreed that the difference was potentially significant for viewers’ understanding of a discussion in which the level of nurses’ pay and the justification it provided for strike action was central.  This aspect of the complaint was upheld.  Ms Cullen also referred to nurses “working the additional unpaid hours they do” to support the NHS, which the complainant interpreted as a claim that nurses did not receive overtime payments.  In the ECU’s view, however, it was a reference to nurses on occasion working voluntarily for extra hours, and was unlikely to have given viewers in general the impression that they had no contractual entitlement to overtime payments.  This aspect of the complaint was not upheld.
Partly upheld