Steve Barclay: ask him to use any of the equipment behind him and he couldn’t. He’s only useful for punishing the people who can.
Is Steve Barclay trying to outflank the Royal College of Nursing?
It seems that, after talks with 14 health unions, he is going to impose a pay deal on more than a million NHS workers including ambulance workers, nurses, physios and porters,
The deal is a five per cent pay rise plus a one-off payment of at least £1,655 which This Writer understands is to raise overall pay for the last (2022-23) financial year.
From the way it’s being presented, the deal is also being imposed on the three unions that haven’t accepted it – including Unite (which has a limited mandate for strike action) and the RCN (which needs to ballot for more).
This leads to an obvious question:
What if the RCN (or the others) strike again and win a better deal?
Won’t that upset members of the other unions?
And isn’t that what Steve Barclay wants?
Tory philosophy can be summed up with the words “divide and rule”.
I reckon he’s hoping that the RCN – and the others – will be discouraged from going further by the possibility of losing solidarity with the other unions – or if they go ahead, strike, and get a better deal, the other unions will turn their collective back on them.
And that will probably mess up any collective action in the future, meaning the Tories can bully these unions to their hearts’ content.
It’s vile, verminous behaviour from a government that owes any credibility it kept during the Covid-19 crisis to the dedication of these professionals.
Each one of the staff who are now to receive a derogatory pay cut (in the face of higher-than 10 per cent inflation) is worth far, far more to the nation than Steve Barclay.
But, of course, in backwards Britain, the rewards are reversed:
There is a simple way out of the dilemma Barclay has set.
It is to remember that Steve Barclay is creating any problems – not the unions, their members or their leaders.
And one more thing, for people in England and Northern Ireland:
A vote against the Conservatives (and/or their allies) during the local elections on Thursday is a vote in support of the health unions.
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Nurses have gone back to the picket lines, striking for better pay and conditions in the NHS in a 28-hour strike that ends at midnight on May Day (May 1).
Today we're back out on the picket lines fighting not only for ourselves but for the future of the NHS
If you'll be supporting us and other NHS workers on the picket lines today please reply with a 💙#FairPayForNursing
It was supposed to be a full two-day strike, ending at 8pm on May 2, but Health Secretary Steve Barclay had the part of it taking place on May 2 halted via the courts.
He said that, since nurses were balloted for strike action on November 2 last year and such mandates last for six months, no strike action could take place on May 2. But that would imply that the ballot, its count, and the announcement of the result all took place on the first second of November 2 – which is of course impossible. So This Writer’s opinion is that the High Court has sided with the wrong side (again).
And look how some of our (hem-hem) friends in the media have responded:
Do striking nurses still have your support?
Nurses have walked out of wards in the largest industrial action so far.
It's after they rejected the government's pay offer.
Nurses from intensive care units & some A&E departments are also walking out.
Notice the references to “walking out of wards”, to nurses from intensive care and A&E have joined the strike, having “rejected” a government pay offer (without mentioning that it’s a huge pay cut), and the repeated question, having passed these comments: “Do they have your support?”
To which the answer can only be:
Yes, they bloody well do!
Nurses have taken a de facto 20 per cent pay cut since the Tories took power, meaning they work one day a week for free. This has put many off staying in the NHS, meaning those who remain have to do more work than they should, to make up the shortfall.
This has caused morale to plummet and has created mental and physical health problems for nurses.
This in turn has worsened the problem of nurses leaving.
And this has worsened the quality of the care provided by the NHS.
Nurses are striking because they want to halt the destruction of the UK’s greatest institution that is being deliberately caused by the Conservative government, personified by Health Secretary Steve Barclay.
He, by the way, appears to have been telling falsehoods – firstly by saying strike action by members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is “disrespectful”…
Health Secretary slams nurses branding strike action ‘disrespectful’. Steve Barclay believes the Royal College of Nursing is in the wrong for taking strike action. Read more ➡️ https://t.co/ejcyHPSWcapic.twitter.com/iY9K69EUoj
Speaking to broadcasters yesterday, Mr Barclay said, “I think this strike is premature and is disrespectful to those trade unions that will be meeting on Tuesday.”
… and secondly by saying he has been talking with the RCN over the weekend:
Jon Kay – Steve Barclay(Health Secretary) says he has been engaging with the RCN over the weekend?
Pat Cullen(Royal College of Nursing) – "I have had absolutely no talks with Steve Barclay over the weekend, that's factually incorrect… "#BBCBreakfastpic.twitter.com/Pr5apozmkq
So, once again, nurses are fighting for our health service while their despotic paymasters take to the media to falsely claim that they are harming it, and to lie that they are trying to resolve the situation when they are not.
Remember: these Tories were all-too-keen to stand on their doorsteps and applaud nurses who worked – and in some cases died – during the Covid-19 crisis. Perhaps they did so because it didn’t cost any money. Now they are treating the same people like traitors.
Who are you going to side with – the hard-working nurses who want the NHS to be the best health service possible, or the lying Tories who are actively trying to ruin it?
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‘Talks not courts’: RCN general secretary Pat Cullen outside the High Court in London.
The High Court has upheld a government claim that a nurses’ strike planned for the Bank Holiday weekend is partly unlawful.
The Royal College of Nursing had promised to abide by any decision, meaning that strike action from midnight until 8pm on May 2 has been called off.
So the government that clapped nurses during the Covid-19 crisis has now taken them to court – and took £35k in costs from the RCN – for having the temerity to ask to be paid enough money to live on.
Nurses outside the High Court in London made the point by brandishing placards bearing the question: “Who takes their heroes to court?”
The Tories are already pushing their narrative that nurses are being selfish by denying NHS patients “the service they deserve”.
But the simple fact is that nobody deserves a health service that is on its knees because of constant de-funding by the Tory government that is driving good, qualified nursing staff away in search of work that pays enough for them to survive.
The Tory rhetoric is nothing more than emotional blackmail, which is a form of bullying.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay is already being accused of intimidating his staff. His treatment of nurses indicates a precedent for those accusations.
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen made the obvious point in her response to the ruling:
Cullen, who joined nurses outside the court in a demonstration on Thursday morning, said she accepted the ruling but claimed it could rally her members to support further strikes.
She said: “The full weight of government gave ministers this victory over nursing staff. It is the darkest day of this dispute so far – the government taking its own nurses through the courts in bitterness at their simple expectation of a better pay deal.
“Nursing staff will be angered but not crushed by today’s interim order. It may even make them more determined to vote in next month’s reballot for a further six months of action. Nobody wants strikes until Christmas – we should be in the negotiating room, not the courtroom today.”
The High Court hearing was unusual in that the RCN did not send lawyers to represent nurses, saying it did not want to “give credence” to Barclay’s legal action and the trade union legislation on which it was based.
Instead it relied on a witness statement by Ms Cullen – which Mr Justice Linden told the court suggested she had accepted the government’s legal position. He suggested that much of it had been written for a “different audience”.
The RCN is set to re-ballot its members next month, seeking a legal mandate to continue its strike action from June to December.
Will nurses be discouraged by the court ruling – or will they be infuriated by the government’s intransigence and demand redoubled strike action, simply to get a fair rate of pay?
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The Guardian reckons the Department of Health’s top civil servant has received multiple complaints about Health Secretary Steve Barclay; the DoH itself says he hasn’t.
So your answer, for the moment, depends on who you trust.
It’s certainly true that the Tory government won’t want to deal with another bullying scandal so soon after Dominic Raab, and will want to discourage civil servants from acting on the precedent created by the former Deputy Prime Minister’s case.
According to the Graun,
senior civil servants in the department had privately referred to “bullying” and other “bad behaviour” by Barclay towards his staff since he joined the Whitehall department in July last year.
One source said there were “a lot of unhappy people at the Department of Health just now”, in part as a result of Barclay’s behaviour. Another said officials in his private office had “borne the brunt” of his behaviour. “Everyone finds him quite challenging,” said a third source.
Two other Whitehall sources alleged that he had regularly “blasted” staff in full view of others in the office. One of these insiders said he was “constantly angry”, which was “very difficult” for officials, who now “don’t want to have meetings with him”. Another source claimed that there were occasions were he “deliberately ignored” staff who tried to talk to him.
A separate source added: “Barclay’s style is very macho … He would say that he’s forensic. But in reality he’s a micro-manager. He hauls people over the coals and is generally a bit unpleasant.”
The BBC – ever the Tory mouthpiece – has run a story based around the government’s denials.
The Department of Health has not received any formal complaints about the behaviour of Health Secretary Steve Barclay, a spokesman has said.
Someone who has worked with him told the BBC the claims were “totally unsubstantiated and a politically motivated attack”.
Another government official said many colleagues “speak highly” of Mr Barclay and are unhappy about the briefings.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told Sky News that his colleague Mr Barclay was “absolutely not” a bully.
(This on its own is probably enough to convince anyone that he is; Cleverly’s relationship with the facts has been put in doubt before, remember.)
Both The Guardian and the BBC reported that the Department of Health had said no official complaints had been received.
But that’s not what the claims in The Guardian had said. It stated that civil servants had informally complained to Chris Wormald, the department’s permanent secretary, about the way they believe they and colleagues have been treated by the Health Secretary.
And it added that the DoH
did not deny being alerted to concerns informally in the way sources described.
This could be a very clever trap set by Guardian journalists for the Tory government.
With the official denials out in the open, civil servants may be encouraged to lodge official complaints, simply from anger at having their privately-raised concerns denied.
So, by refusing to admit the existence of any complaints at all – official or unofficial, the government may have put Steve Barclay on a path to the political dustbin.
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Steve Barclay: he holds NHS staff in contempt, even though he’s surrounded by kit that he can’t make work – and they can.
It’s as though NHS employees – doctors, nurses or whoever – are the children of an abusive parent.
And Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s mistreatment of (among others) nurses has not gone unnoticed.
So the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing has condemned as “disgraceful” his decision to “bully” nurses into submission with legal action against their next two-day strike.
Her response echoes that of an abused family member who has taken too much and refuses to accept any more…
The leader of the Royal College of Nursing has said a legal attempt by the health secretary to block next weekend’s strike in England is “frightening for democracy and very frightening for trade unionism”.
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the RCN, said it was “disgraceful” that Steve Barclay was attempting to thwart the strike via the courts, and said nurses would “not be bullied into silence”.
“We have instructed our legal counsel and we will stand up for nursing. This is about standing up not just for nursing but for trade unionism and for democracy,” she told the Observer.
“It’s utterly disgraceful that he [Barclay] would prefer to use money to challenge nurses than to pay them, at a time when those nurses are struggling to pay their bills. He is using public funding, patients’ money, to challenge nurses through the court.”
She added that a claim by Barclay that the government’s legal action sought to protect nurses who could “otherwise be asked to take part in unlawful activity that could in turn put their professional registration at risk” was a “blatant threat”. “He is trying to frighten nursing staff. That registration is their livelihood,” she said.
It’s actually insulting. Barclay is playing the ‘kindly uncle’ character, who fakes concern for youngsters in his charge while actually subjecting them to harm.
Sadly, his attitude is rubbing off on members of the general public, who are also starting to treat NHS staff as government property, in the same way some children have to comply with parental wishes (whether they are benign or not – and in this case they’re malign).
… to have.
If the government wants to retain NHS staff, they’re going to have to apply the market forces they’re so fond of, and start paying these professionals properly.
— Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 (@JujuliaGrace) April 23, 2023
And what’s the upshot of all this abuse?
Let’s skip across to see what’s happening to doctors:
Like a child suffering mental health problems as a result of living in an abusive household?
You may be thinking that the comparison is false. Doctors and nurses are, after all, highly-trained professionals who could merrily move out to any other health organisation in this or other countries.
But the UK’s National Health Service has an emotional hold over almost everybody in the UK (Tory MPs and private health executives/shareholders excepted). It inspires almost familial loyalty in that respect.
That is a great strength in retaining staff – but also part of the problem because it gives Tories carte blanche to cut pay and otherwise abuse staff, which leads to the mental health problems that we’re seeing too.
It is vital to point out how this demonstrates the contempt in which the Tories in general – and Barclay in particular – hold NHS staff.
Without that understanding, it would be hard to understand why the Tories are obstructing pay negotiations the way they are.
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Did you understand that Health Secretary Steve Barclay is taking legal action against the Royal College of Nursing, not because its strike from April 30 to May 2 is illegal in itself, but because he disagrees with its timing?
When the RCN balloted its members for strike action on November 2 last year, the mandate was to last six months.
Barclay reckons that means the mandate ends on May 1 and therefore most of the second day of the 48-hour strike (it ends at 8pm BST on May 2) falls outside the RCN’s mandate to strike.
The RCN disagrees (obviously) – and This Writer tends to agree. If the ballot takes place on a particular day – it seems to me – any mandate must begin on a subsequent day; the following day seems the logical choice.
The RCN’s argument seems to corroborate this, as it quotes a precedent from a miner’s strike from 1995 that gives it until midnight on May 2.
Here’s Taj Ali to provide some background:
BREAKING: Health Secretary @SteveBarclay confirms he will pursue legal action to ask the courts to declare the upcoming @theRCN nurses' strikes to be illegal.
RCN says 'Bullying nurses' and dragging them through the highest courts shows 'utter contempt for nursing staff.'
@theRCN say they will forcibly resist attempts to block the strike, which they insist is legal. "We will make the case for the legality of our action in all forums."
The request for an order that stops strike action until a court has decided whether it is legal could be a double-edged sword for the government.
If the court rules in the government’s favour, then the RCN has said it will abide by the decision.
But if it rules against Barclay, then he will have hindered a legal strike for no good reason at all. That would be a public-relations disaster for him and his government.
They would have force-halted a legal and reasonable strike for no good reason.
They would have demonstrated that they are not to be trusted on any level in negotiations over pay.
They would have shown that they are unfit to serve the UK as its government.
Right?
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Steve Barclay: he doesn’t know how any of this equipment works and he is attacking the people who do, while the UK’s medical patients go without treatment.
This looks very bad for the Tory government.
The BMA, which represents junior doctors, supports mediation via ACAS. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has intervened to call for it.
But Steve Barclay refuses to accept it – according to The Times. And, unlike the doctors, he wants to impose preconditions on any talks. Why?
To all those eminent medics helpfully appealing to "both sides" to talk, can we please be really clear that one side – junior doctors – *is* appealing to the other to negotiate?
But @SteveBarclay fears ACAS might agree with juniors.
Is that really it? Barclay’s afraid that a mediator will oppose him and side with the doctors?
If so, then the cat’s out of the bag and he’ll look bad, whatever he does now.
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Tory wasters: Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay have wasted billions of pounds that could have paid for much more than the pay rises demanded by doctors, nurses and ambulance crews. If they withheld it because they’re trying to steer us towards privatisation, they have failed.
The Conservatives have been paying billions of pounds to private health-related companies for services that have not been provided – while accusing striking doctors, nurses and ambulance staff of jeopardising patient care.
Experts say the figure is just scratching the surface, with NHS bosses in England having been given the green light to spend up to £10bn on private health companies as part of the government’s plan to reduce the record number of patients waiting for care.
The biggest beneficiary of the outsourcing has been the Australian healthcare multinational Ramsay, which received £134m to offer non-emergency care to NHS patients between 2021 and 2022.
Spire Healthcare, which operates 38 private hospitals formerly owned by Bupa, has been handed a further £108m over the same period. Circle, which is owned by Centene, one of the biggest US healthcare corporations, was paid £50m.
A further 30 private companies, which also include the Nuffield Trust and Specsavers, have been paid £195m in total as part of a contract aimed at boosting the number of patients the NHS treats in England between 2021 and 2022.
The data was obtained by openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request to all 42 NHS Integrated Care Boards, which are responsible for spending and managing NHS budgets regionally in England. Only 23 responded to openDemocracy’s request, meaning the total cost could be significantly higher.
But the number of patients being treated has not recovered even to pre-Covid-19 levels:
Between January and November 2022, the NHS treated 6.6% fewer patients from elective care waiting lists than it did over the same period in 2019, according to an analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
The think tank said in February that the NHS was “clearly lagging” behind its target to increase the number of people it is treating to around 30% above pre-pandemic levels by 2024/25.
Exhibit B:
WHERE DID THE MONEY GO TO "DHSC wasted £15bn on unused Covid supplies" says @NAOorguk No money for nurses & junior doctors? But plenty for PPE VIP LANES & Tory donors who own private healthcare companies. Corruption is at the Tory core.https://t.co/liyyLMjfSS
The department spent £8.9bn during 2020-21 and another £6bn last year on such supplies, including masks and gowns for NHS staff that have proved unuseable and are now being burned.
The sums were revealed in the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) annual accounts and report for 2021-22, published on Thursday, and highlighted in a highly critical assessment issued by the National Audit Office (NAO).
The DHSC’s report also disclosed that it expects to spend £319m storing and disposing of PPE which is no longer needed and is of such poor quality that it is no use to frontline staff anyway.
In March last year it was still spending £24m a month storing the infection-preventing equipment, the NAO said.
On the subject of storage, there’s this:
You have to wonder why we bought so much PPE – much from Tory donors at 500% of pre-pandemic prices – that we didn't even bother having shipped to the UK.
i analysis of figures provided by NHS bodies showed that strikes by junior doctors, nurses, ambulance and other health workers have already led to 665,000 cancelled appointments or operations.
NHS Providers in March said 140,000 appointments were postponed due to nurses and ambulance workers walking out between December and mid-March.
NHS England said the first junior doctors strike last month caused the cancellation of 175,000 operations and appointments.
Up to 350,000 appointments could have been cancelled during the unprecedented four-day junior doctors walkout last week, the NHS Confederation estimated.
Separately, NHS England analysis said the first nurse walkouts on 15 and 20 December caused the cancellation of almost 30,000 operations and appointments.
This is not justification for government investment in the private sector, though. Quite the opposite.
Let’s go back to that Open Democracy article for a moment:
Junior doctors are asking for a 35% pay rise to reverse 15 years of below-inflation wage increases.
The BMA calculates that the net cost of the pay rise for the government would be £1.03bn – a tenth of the potential spending on private healthcare companies. Even the £500m spent last year could have funded an 8% uplift in junior doctor wages for the year in question.
Add nurses and ambulance staff to the calculation and bringing their pay up to parity with 2008 or 2010 levels would still cost a fraction of what Rishi Sunak and his government have wasted – let’s be clear on that: wasted – on private health firms that simply do not help.
Exhibit D:
NHS strikes: RCN union chief warns that nurses could still be striking ‘right up until Christmas’ https://t.co/5kEJfmjmrX
The Tories don’t want to go into talks with preconditions, and won’t talk if strike action is likely. In other words, the only talks they want are if they tell the nurses (and other NHS staff) what they have to take. No union representative will accept those – let’s face it – preconditions. In any case, it is hypocritical of the Tory government to demand preconditions while condemning nurses for having any of their own.
Exhibit E:
Report via @TheKingsFund Latest BSA survey is desperate. In 2010 satisfaction with NHS peaked at 70% In 2022 it fell to 29% – lowest figure on record Social Care satisfaction comes in at 14%. Real people. Real heartbreak The result of Tory financial greedhttps://t.co/8A4QuQdJQM
From a peak of 70 per cent in 2010, overall satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to just 29 per cent – the lowest figure recorded since this question was first asked in 1983. Satisfaction with individual NHS services is at record lows across the board, while satisfaction with social care is the lowest of all with only 14 per cent of the public saying they are satisfied with it.
Yet none of this translates into any appetite for user charging or a different funding model, the first options that some commentators flailing around for a magical solution tend to clutch at. The public’s aspirations seem straightforward: they simply want an NHS that does what it says on the tin and that works. They were highly satisfied with a system that provided this as recently as 12 years ago, and they do not accept that this is too much to ask.
This may come as a huge disappointment to leading Tories, who are generally believed to have spent the last 13 years de-funding the NHS in order to stop it working properly, in the belief that public opinion would swing behind changing to a US-style, insurance-based, privately-run health system.
The article suggests that £30 billion would be needed to support the kind of pay deals NHS workers need. From the Open Democracy article, this seems a lot more than necessary – but let’s consider the options it presents anyway:
Earlier this year I noted the suggestion that £30 billion was required to fund appropriate NHS pay deals and wrote a proposal to address the need to finance this, including the possibility that it simply be added to the deficit, which is wholly plausible. As I suggestsed then… this funding could be addressed as follows:
1) £10 billion could come from the additional taxes paid by those lured back to the NHS by better working conditions and higher pay, and by those lured back having given up on work altogether. The impact of the extra NHS spending on growth elsewhere in the economy is also taken into account in this estimate.
2) At least £5 billion might be raised from taxes paid by those able to return to the workforce either because their own conditions will be sufficiently well managed to allow this or because those that they care for will enjoy better health, letting them return to work.
So, at least half of the funding required will be directly generated from the benefits created by that additional spending. Options for the remaining £15 billion include:
3) A government could simply decide to run a bigger deficit to fund the £15 billion requirement. The impact on the national debt is insignificant.
4) The Bank of England currently has a programme of selling the government debt it owns bought under the quantitative easing programmes that paid for the banking crises of 2008/9, the Brexit crisis of 2016 and the Covid crisis of 2020/21. If £15bn of this programme was cancelled each year and bonds to fund the NHS were sold instead the funding to deliver the healthcare we need could be found. In this case, there would be no net impact on the national debt owned by third parties.
5) National Savings and Investments could issue NHS Bonds in ISA accounts to provide the funding. £70 billion is saved in ISAs each year. Properly marketed, it would be easy to find £15 billion a year this way.
6) Halving the tax reliefs on savings available to the wealthiest 10% of people in the UK each year. At present it is likely that this group enjoy at least £30 billion of pension and ISA tax reliefs each year.
7) Since the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons has found that for every £1 spent on tax investigations £18 of additional tax is raised, investing £1 billion in additional funding with HM Revenue & Customs might be enough to recover the funds required for the NHS each year.
8) The rate of capital gains tax in the UK is currently set at half the rate of income tax in most cases. If it was set at the same rate as the income tax rate then the revenue from this tax might double, raising £15 billion a year.
Judging by all this evidence, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that the Tory government has wasted huge amounts of money that could have been used to support real investment in the National Health Service, and is claiming there is no money available now.
But in fact there are many options available to it; ministers are simply refusing to consider them.
So the NHS crisis that has led to the strikes by doctors, nurses and ambulance teams was caused by the Tory government, and the Tories are deliberately withholding the cash necessary to restore the system.
It is Tory waste that has caused the problem; the strikers are simply doing the only thing they can do to raise awareness of it.
Fortunately, we have Peter Stefanovic to provide context:
🚨Junior doctors strikes🚨
All journalists – please don’t forget to mention in your reporting that Health Secretary @SteveBarclay wants junior doctors restricted to a derisory crappy 2% with inflation at 10.4%
Let us hope the government is able to bring something more substantial to the table today.
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Junior doctors: they’ll strike again tomorrow (Tuesday, April 11, 2023 – this is an image from 2016) for four days while health secretary Steve Barclay dithers over whether to negotiate with them.
Junior doctors are presenting a strong case for a pay rise ahead of a four-day strike this week – citing the fact that MP salaries have risen almost in line with inflation whereas they have taken a 26 per cent pay cut.
Doctors’ representatives have taken to the TV studios to explain their case – and it is compelling.
Here’s Dr Amir Khan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
'For the most junior doctors, it is a difference between £14 an hour and £19 an hour.'@DrAmirKhanGP tells @ranvir01 and @richardm56 that junior doctors want pay restoration.
Part of the problem, it seems, is that the Tory government simply isn’t telling anybody its own starting position for pay negotiations. Here’s Dr Mike Greenhalgh on BBC Breakfast:
Charlie Stayt – Steve Barclay wants you to drop your 35% pay rise claim?
Dr Mike Greenhalgh(BMA Junior Doctors) – "That's isn't a pay rise, that just reverses the pay cuts… that means a first-year doctor going from £14 an hour to £19 an hour…" #BBCBreakfastpic.twitter.com/vyq4YP7dCr
With no movement from either side, NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor has called for the independent Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) to be contacted for help with negotiations.
Acas used to be in the news all the time during the strikes of the 1970s and 80s, but seems to have fallen out of favour over recent decades.
Mr Taylor warned that 350,000 appointments and operations could be cancelled during the four-day strike that starts tomorrow (Tuesday, April 11, 2023) and said both sides needed help to progress:
We should consider asking the government and the trade unions to call in Acas, the conciliation service, to provide some basis for negotiations, because if anything the positions seem to have hardened over the last couple of days.
Services are stretched and there’s no question there will be a risk to patient safety, there will be a risk to patient dignity because we’re unable to provide the kind of care we want.
To be facing this situation where those waiting lists are going to get longer, cancelling work, not being able to guarantee the level of care you want to provide – well that’s heartbreaking for an NHS leader.
Health secretary Steve Barclay has said he is refusing to negotiate until doctors pause their strike and step back from their demand to have pay brought back to parity with its position in 2010.
He’s saying he wants junior doctors to accept that they deserve lower pay rises than he does.
Considering the huge amount of good that doctors do for so many people every day, and the huge amount of harm that the Conservative government of the last 13 years has done to so many more, This Writer has a question:
Who do you think is being unrealistic?
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