Nursing union threatens strikes until CHRISTMAS and hints at tie-in with junior doctors as ministers warn NHS pay deal is ‘full and final offer’ – and even Labour says it cannot support walkouts that ‘risk patient safety’
- RCN members voted to reject pay deal on Friday and announced new strike date
Nursing unions today threatened to keep striking until Christmas as ministers warned that the NHS pay deal is a ‘full and final offer’.
The Royal College of Nursing announced on Friday that its members will walk out for 48 hours from 8pm on April 30 after rejecting the settlement.
Staff in emergency departments, intensive care and cancer wards will take industrial action for the first time.
Speaking to the BBC this morning, RCN chief Pat Cullen demanded the terms are improved avoid further action – and refused to rule out coordinating with junior doctors.
But Tory chairman Greg Hands pointed out that other NHS staff were accepting the ‘great’ package, suggesting there is little scope for improving it with inflation running rampant and the public finances stretched.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting accused the government of a ‘dereliction of duty’ for failing to end the strikes. However, he raised concerns that the RCN is dropping safeguards on patient safety, making clear Labour would not support that.
Ms Cullen insisted that nurses will come off picket lines to deal with emergencies.
The Royal College of Nursing announced on Friday that its members will walk out for 48 hours from 8pm on April 30 after rejecting the settlement.
Speaking to the BBC this morning, RCN chief Pat Cullen demanded the terms are improved avoid further action – and refused to rule out coordinating with junior doctors
Tory chairman Greg Hands pointed out that other NHS staff were accepting the ‘great’ package, suggesting there is little scope for improving it with inflation running rampant and the public finances stretched
Asked on the Laura Kuenssberg On Sunday programme whether the RCN will stop strikes, Ms Cullen said: ‘No, our nurses will absolutely not do that.
‘We have strike action for the end of this month and the beginning of May.
‘Then we will move immediately to ballot our members.
‘If that ballot is successful it will mean further strike action right up until Christmas.’
The union leader put the government’s offer to members. But she said nurses saw a one-off Covid bonus as a ‘bribe’.
NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery told the programme it is ‘not sustainable’ for the NHS to continue managing strike action.
She said: ‘It’s really clear to me that it’s not sustainable going forward for the NHS to manage strike action.
‘It feels like a really ugly situation to say we are going to have strikes now until Christmas.
‘We really desperately need the Government to come to the table alongside the unions coming to the table to sort this out.’
In an article for The Sun on Sunday, Health Secretary Steve Barclay warned that fresh nurses’ strikes would have a ‘deeply concerning’ impact on emergency services and cancer care.
On Friday, Unison’s NHS members accepted the pay offer of a 5 per cent rise this year and a cash payment for last year.
However, 54 per cent of RCN members voted to reject the deal.
The turnout among RCN members employed on NHS Agenda for Change contracts in England was 61 per cent.
The RCN announcement came as around 47,000 junior doctors finished their 96-hour strike in a separate dispute over pay at 7am on Saturday.
Mr Streeting appealed to the RCN to continue to protect emergency lifesaving care if it strikes again.
He told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: ‘I’m deeply worried about the risk of escalation of the nature of their dispute, to remove what’s known as the derogations, the measures they put in place to protect those areas of care.’
Mr Streeting said of the strikes: ‘I’m really worried about it, particularly the decision they appear to have taken to remove derogations – the exemptions they put in place previously around emergency care, cancer care – I think that is a real risk to patient safety…
‘We don’t want to see strikes go ahead in the NHS, we don’t want to see an escalation.’
Pushed on whether Labour would back strikes, he said: ‘No, how could I? There is a risk to patient safety, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do.’
Mr Hands said a ‘full and final’ pay offer had been made to nurses, adding that ministers are waiting to see if the other trade unions accept it.
‘We think that we’ve made a fair and reasonable offer,’ he told the Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme on Sky News.
‘It is a full and final offer. But we are waiting for the other results to come in from the other unions…
Mr Streeting appealed to the RCN to continue to protect emergency lifesaving care if it strikes again
‘It’s only reasonable for us during the middle of the balloting process to wait to see those further results and we’ll be laying out a response.
‘We’ll obviously be meeting with the NHS staff unions as well to make sure that we can take that forward.’
He added: ‘Steve Barclay is always willing to talk so long as there aren’t preconditions attached, and so long as there isn’t the threat of strikes going on at the moment.’
Mr Hands said more strikes by nurses would ‘clearly have an impact’.
‘I think the public are very concerned, understandably, and we will do everything that we can, and I’m sure the management of the NHS will do everything that it can to make sure that the impact of the strike is kept under control,’ he said.
‘But I wouldn’t be being truthful if I didn’t say it will have an impact. Nurses going on strike will clearly have an impact.’
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