Tories book residential home beds to relieve NHS pressures after strike negotiations fail AGAIN
Health Secretary Steve Barclay outlined plans to ease “severe pressures” on the NHS and free up hospital beds.
The emergency measures were announced hours after talks intended to end strike action by NHS workers ended in failure.
So what happened?
Well… First we were told that prime minister Rishi Sunak was planning to offer a lump sum to help nurses who were facing “hardship”.
But this created a problem for the government because it meant the Tories had to admit that their starvation wages were causing hardship – and that’s a bad look for any government:
Did he even offer these payments?
Apparently not. All we know is that leaders of Unite said the government had missed “yet another opportunity” by demanding “productivity” improvements …
And those at Unison came out of the talks complaining of no “tangible” offer from the Health Secretary…
So there you have it.
Steve Barclay is bulk-booking beds in private residential homes – with £250 million of public money – because he refuses to pay nurses a living wage.
Indeed, he has demanded that they should work longer than 18 hours a day in order to justify any increased payment.
This is simply unreasonable and reinforces claims that the Tory government is pushing NHS wages down in order to make it more appetising for private buyers after the public has been convinced that privatisation is the only way to improve healthcare in the UK…
And we know that this is a lie. Private health cherry-picks the most lucrative health procedures but then cuts corners in order to make ever-higher profits, and the public purse ends up being forced to pay to put matters right.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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