The coordinated strike action by nurses and ambulance workers next month will mark a “step change” in the labour dispute in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), a senior health service leader has warned.
The UK is expected to see the biggest-ever strike action within the NHS on Feb. 6, when ambulance staff and nurses plan to walk out simultaneously for the first time.
Chris Hopson, chief strategy officer for NHS England, said it will be a “difficult” day.
Talking to the Health and Social Care Committee in the House of Commons on Tuesday, he said, “Next month will see a step change in the action arising from the dispute between the trade unions and the government.”
New Phase
Hopson said that Feb. 6 is expected to be the biggest strike day in NHS history for five reasons.“Firstly, we’re going to have nursing and ambulance unions planning coordinated industrial action across the country. Secondly, we know that the nursing stoppage will last for two days, rather than one.
“Thirdly, we know that the numbers of trusts affected will go from 44 in December to 55 in January to 73 in February; there is now a shorter gap between the strikes; and this strike starts on a Monday, which effectively makes it difficult to deploy the discharge of patients to improve flow, which is what we’ve been doing in previous strikes.”
He said the NHS is “now entering a new and more difficult phase in the dispute.”
But he said the health service is doing all it can to “make sure that those who need care receive it.”
Dr. Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that ongoing issues in the NHS “came to a head” in December, which he described as “awful.”
He said he is concerned that during ambulance strikes, some vulnerable people who need support may not seek help.
“We worry that there will be people who don’t want to make a fuss, who are desperate not to go into hospital and not to bother people,” he said.
Hopson stressed, “It is incredibly important that any patient who does have a life-threatening emergency does call 999 and that for any other urgent care, please use 111 online.”
Worsening Dispute
The Royal College of Nursing is set to stage strikes on Feb. 6 and 7, which will involve 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.The GMB union stated that 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.
The Unite union said that workers from five ambulance trusts in England and Wales would also join the strike on Feb. 6.
It comes after thousands of nurses across England went on strike on Jan. 18 and 19, while about 1,000 ambulance workers in Wales also walked out on Jan. 19.
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told ITV News: “Taking a step back, of course it would be lovely to be able to wave a magic wand and just give everyone what they were demanding when it came to pay. But my job as prime minister is to make the right decisions for the country, and they are, more often than not, not easy decisions.
“But that’s my job, and that’s what I will always do in this job, and… when you think about this, how would we pay for these things? Where’s the money going to come from?
“Actually, it’s probably going to have to come from elsewhere in the NHS budget, and that means fewer nurses, fewer doctors, fewer MRI scanners and CT scanners that are diagnosing people with cancer, or indeed fewer mental health ambulances that we’re announcing today that are going to save people from going to A&E.
“My job is to balance all of those things and do what I believe is right for the country.”
But he said the government would continue talks with unions.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, told LBC radio on Monday: “There’s many, many days between now and Feb. 6, and I hope the government come to their senses, get the general secretaries around the table—we will be there any time, any place, anywhere—and do this deal.
“So, I really hope that Feb. 6 doesn’t go ahead because the government puts an offer on the table. If they don’t do that, of course it will go ahead. It will be a very bad day for the NHS, everybody will feel that.”
