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Nurses left high and dry as ministers pressed to open pay talks

Senior NHS official calls for talks to avert further strikes amid pressure on healthcare, with warnings of hundreds dying due to delays in emergency care
Ambulances queue outside a hospital emergency department

Senior NHS official calls for talks to avert further strikes amid pressure on health system, with warnings of hundreds dying due to delays in emergency care

Ambulances queue outside a hospital emergency department
Picture: Alamy

Nurses are being left ‘high and dry’ as the NHS faces intolerable pressure, amid warnings that up to 500 people are dying a week due to delays in emergency care.

One senior NHS official urged the government to begin pay negotiations to help avert further strikes by nurses and other healthcare workers.

NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor told BBC Breakfast that trusts are unable to ‘provide the level of service we want to provide’ due to workforce constraints and 130,000 vacancies in the NHS.

‘It’s important that as ministers return to their desks they consider ways of reopening negotiations with the trade unions, because four days of strikes on top of the situation we’re in now is the last thing we need,’ he said.

Nurses and other healthcare heroes left high and dry, say Liberal Democrats

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats said the situation was so urgent that parliament should be recalled. Health spokesperson Daisy Cooper said: ‘NHS paramedics, nurses and doctors are this country’s heroes but they have been left high and dry by the government. They need help right now before more people die.’

It comes as the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) between 300 and 500 people are dying a week as they wait for emergency care.

With more than a dozen trusts declaring critical incidents over the festive period, British Medical Association (BMA) council chair Philip Banfield hit out at prime minister Rishi Sunak and health and social care secretary Steve Barclay and claimed it was a political choice to let patients die.

Scene at a busy emergency department
Picture: John Houlihan

DHSC says door remains open for talks on how to improve working lives of NHS staff

Professor Banfield said: ‘Instead of criticising front-line doctors, nurses and paramedics for wanting to be valued and given the facilities to provide treatment and care, the government should deliver on its obligations to the public.

‘It is just not true that the cost of resolving this mess cannot be afforded by this country. This is a political choice and patients are dying unnecessarily because of that choice.’

In November, 37,837 patients waited more than 12 hours in emergency departments to be admitted to a hospital wards, according to figures from NHS England – a 355% increase on the same month a year earlier.

Nurses in England are set to walk out on 18 and 19 January, while paramedics will be staging more strikes on 11 and 23 January. Nurses staged two days of strike action for better pay and safe staffing in December, with thousands joining picket lines.

The Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement: ‘The health secretary and ministers have met with unions several times and have been clear their door remains open to further discuss how we can work together to improve the working lives of NHS staff.’


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