During the height of the covid pandemic, the government called on us all to  stand  on the street and applaud the heroic NHS staff once a week.

That cost the government and us nothing at all, apart from some dented saucepans.

Now that the end of the pandemic may be sight, there is opportunity to reflect on some more material gratitude to be shown to NHS workers.

What does our pinchpenny government come up with?  A measly 1 per cent.

That is after rewarding, to the tune of £10.5 billion for PPE etc,   private companies, many of them owned by cronies of ministers, without having to tender for the work, and much of the stuff found on delivery to be unusable.

For years the NHS has been under-staffed. It is currently carrying over 40,000 nurse vacancies and over 9,000 doctor vacancies.

It is acknowledged by NHS bosses that, as a consequence of this under-staffing, nurses and doctors are working  one million hours per week of unpaid overtime.

The average annual pay of a nurse is £33,000.

A scandal revealed, during the Covid crisis , is that some nurses have to rely on food-banks.

An MP’s basic pay is £81,000 and there are various allowances on top.

Here is my simple formula. It would make little difference to the Covid debt to give all NHS staff  – nurses, doctors, mortuary workers, cleaners and nursing ancillaries  – a 100 per cent increase.