The NHS faces a day of mass upheaval next month when nurses and ambulance staff in England and Wales stage an unprecedented joint strike over pay.
Health service chiefs said the coordinated walkouts were of “huge concern” and Monday, February 6, “could be the biggest day of industrial action the NHS has ever seen”.
A senior NHS chief has said hospitals will “stand still” as doctors and nurses from other departments are redeployed to provide emergency cover in strike-hit A&Es.
It will be the first time nurses and ambulance workers, including paramedics and operators, have refused to work at the same time.
The escalation of the dispute puts pressure on Rishi Sunak to find a way to deal with the health unions. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister and Keir Starmer again traded spats over the state of the NHS.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 nurses in England and Wales were already due to stage their fifth one-day strike on February 6. On Wednesday, the GMB union announced it would call out more than 10,000 paramedics, operators and other ambulance staff on the same date as one of four more days of its own industrial action.
A senior official at an NHS trust in England said hospitals would be forced to cancel non-urgent operations planned for the day as part of a concerted effort to help emergency departments cope with the absence of many of their staff.
“Co-ordinated strike action is certainly a real concern if it increases the risk of being able to keep staff safe in critical areas, particularly in A&E,” they said.
Nurses will strike at 55 trusts on Thursday, the second consecutive day of action. Taken together with the impact of two days of action in December across 44 trusts, hospitals will be forced to cancel around 10,000 operations and 50,000 outpatient appointments, the NHS Confederation said.
Ministers continue to refuse to improve the below-inflation pay proposals already on the table or, in the case of NHS staff and teachers, even hold detailed talks with their representatives.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Starmer pointed to the long wait for an ambulance as evidence of the “deadly chaos” preventing the health service from providing prompt treatment.
The Labor leader asked Sunak to apologise, and highlighted the case of a 26-year-old woman with cancer, who he named only as Stephanie, who died while waiting for an ambulance in Plymouth.
Sunak refused to do so and instead accused the opposition leader of “playing political games when it comes to people’s healthcare”.
Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, echoes the acute concern of health chiefs about the impact of the double walkout on 6 February. “Trusts have been warning for months that coordinated strikes are possible if the government and unions fail to reach an early deal on this year’s pay. The prospect of ambulance workers and nurses striking on the same day is a huge concern. This could be the biggest day of industrial action the NHS has ever seen,” she said.
“We need ministers to urgently come to the table with the unions to tackle the key issue of pay for this financial year, otherwise there is no light at the end of the tunnel.”
The NHS Confederation made a similar plea. “Our message to the government is … to do everything possible to end this damaging dispute,” said its chief executive, Matthew Taylor.
Some health unions are confused about the Government’s approach to increasing the £1,400 per head premium it has imposed on NHS staff for 2022-23.
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Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said on Wednesday that retrospective pay rises for NHS staff for 2022-23 were unaffordable. Those comments appeared to contradict briefings from government sources and unions after the latest round of talks with Barkley, held on January 9, when he agreed to take union concerns over pay to the Treasury.
Whitehall sources admitted last week that the government now accepts that a one-off cost of living payment or pay rise for 2023-24 backdated to January 1 will be the only way forward.
But Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is understood to have told Barclay there would be no new money for the pay deal, which would have to come out of the existing NHS budget.
Meanwhile, talks between teaching unions and Education Secretary Gillian Keegan to try to avert a planned series of school strikes broke down after just over an hour on Wednesday with no progress on a solution.
Mary Boustead, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said the meeting had been “constructive” and the secretary of state wanted to talk about issues affecting teachers such as workload and recruitment and retention.
But there was no discussion of an improved pay agreement for either this year or next year. “I’m happy to talk about all these other issues, but we’re not talking about things that will resolve the pay dispute,” Boustead said. Its members must stop on and after February 1.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said outstanding issues included the “inadequacy of remuneration” of 5% for this academic year, which he said was “well below inflation”. The government’s determination to cap teacher pay rises in 2023-24 at just 2% was also key, he said.
A minister admitted to MPs on Wednesday that rail strikes have cost the UK economy more than £1 billion and it would have cost less to settle the long-running dispute with unions over pay and conditions months ago.
However, rail minister Hugh Merriman said the need for changes to working practices made the opposition necessary, as he told the Commons transport committee the government had not “torpedoed” a deal nor “interfered in a negative way”.
Additional reporting by Gwyn Topham and Sally Weale.
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