The National Health Service (NHS) is trapped in a vicious cycle of winter pressures and strikes, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation said as thousands of nurses walked out on Wednesday over pay.
Speaking to the PA News Agency, Taylor said without a “realistic prospect of a solution” to the pay dispute, the NHS is “facing the prolonged war of attrition between the government and the unions that we’ve been fearing.”
Taylor urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to “give the NHS a fighting chance,” saying he “must not allow the stand-off in the wider public sector to hold back a deal being reached in the NHS.”
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) from 55 NHS trusts in England are taking part in two-day action on Wednesday and Thursday after up to 100,000 RCN members from other NHS trusts across the UK walked out in December for the first time in history.
The union, which has the mandate to stage actions for six months, said more strikes will happen on Feb. 6 and Feb. 7, involving 73 NHS trusts in England and all but one NHS employer in Wales, unless the government agrees to review the pay deal for this year.
However, the government has maintained that more pay rises are “unaffordable” and will further stoke inflation, which dropped slightly last month but remained in double digits (10.5 percent).
Meanwhile, GMB union said more than 10,000 ambulance workers, including paramedics, emergency care assistants, and call handlers, will stage strikes on Feb. 6—the same day on which nurses are striking—and on Feb. 20, March 6, and March 20.
In Parliament, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer cited an example of a 26-year-old woman who “died waiting for that ambulance,” calling on Sunak to “stop the excuses, stop shifting the blame, stop the political games and simply tell us when will he sort out these delays and get back to the 18-minute wait.”
In response, Sunak accused Starmer of being “a living example of playing political games,” saying he should support the government’s new bill that would give ministers power to set minimum service levels for during strikes in crucial public services.
Labour has said the bill would effectively ban people in certain jobs from ever striking.
Pat Cullen, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, criticised the government’s proposal as being “so far removed from reality,” saying, “Minimum staffing levels are not available for our patients or our nurses on any day of the week” owing to staff shortages.
“So to try and suggest that we’re going to have minimum staffing levels on days of industrial action is just so far removed from reality, and in fact it is a total insult to our patients and to nurses—it just doesn’t happen,“ she told ITV’s ”Good Morning Britain” programme.
“You cannot have minimum staffing levels with 47,000 unfilled posts. So, I do not know how this government’s going to do this.”
Asked if “inflationary pay deals” would end up taking money out of the NHS, as Health Secretary Steve Barclay has said, she told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme: “We can either have our focus totally on balancing the books or we can continue to respect and treat this NHS as it should be for every single patient right throughout the country.
The RCN had initially been calling for a pay rise at 5 percent above inflation though it later said it will accept a 10 percent offer.
Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to Northwick Park Hospital, Barclay said 10 percent is still “not affordable,” insisting that the pay review bodies are ”the right way to balance the affordability” of the pay deals.
“Well 10 percent is not affordable, it would be an extra £3.6 billion a year and obviously that would take money away from patient services, essential services that we need to invest in given the backlogs from the pandemic, he said, adding that the government is focusing on cutting the NHS backlogs.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, waiting time for hospital treatments and emergency departments have grown to record-high because of delayed or missed diagnoses and treatment.
In England alone, by the end of October, 6.95 million people referred for hospital treatment were on waiting lists, slightly down from 7.07 million in the previous month, which was the highest since records began in 2007.
When estimates for missing data are included, the number became 7.21 million, setting a new record high.
Figures from Scotland and Wales show their NHS trusts are also buckling under pressures including post-pandemic backlogs and flu and COVID cases.
