Strikes add to the crisis the NHS faces. It’s been the nurses today, ambulance staff next week. Of course they can be resolved, as can all public pay claims, in this case for the cost of some £13bn to match the full 11.1% peak inflation, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) Ben Zaranko (though unions don’t really expect this amount). That sum could be raised by equalising tax on earned and unearned income, which might yield as much as £14bn, according to the Tax Justice Network.
But leave that aside for now: one mystery is why the government is failing to do what it can to ease NHS pressures immediately. Ineptitude? Stupidity? Or, as conspiracy theorists would have it, a positive desire to prove the NHS doesn’t work?
