Summary
Here’s a summary of the day’s main events:
Nurses – including, for the first time, those working in emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care – walked out on strike over years of worsening pay and conditions. While senior doctors warned of serious disruption, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said a minimum service, including emergency care, would be maintained.
The RCN’s general secretary Pat Cullen warned the health secretary Steve Barclay not to show disrespect to nurses. That came after Barclay portrayed the RCN’s strike for better pay and conditions as a show of disrespect for other health workers who, along with the RCN, are due to meet ministers on Tuesday to discuss the government’s latest offer. Cullen told Barclay not to show contempt for nurses she said were foregoing a day’s pay to fight for improvements to the NHS.
Nurses on the picket lines accused government ministers of failing to back up their rhetoric during the height of the Covid pandemic with a fair offer on pay and conditions. How am I supposed to live? If I don’t pay my council tax, they take me to court, or if I don’t pay my rent, I lose my home. At 70, I’m still working; what life is that? They are clapping for us but refuse to pay us properly,” one striking nurse said.
Nurses will be reballoted in May if no agreement can be reached, the RCN said. “It will end when our government will do the decent thing for nurses, does the decent thing for the people of England and actually does the decent thing for the NHS,” said Cullen.
The prime minister has “questions to answer”, the Labour leader Keir Starmer said. That came after the Sunday Times reported that a company in which Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty holds a stake was given public money. There was no suggestion of any wrongdoing on Murty’s part.
The price of school lunches has increased by more than a third in parts of England, increasing the pressure on school finances and family budgets during the cost of living crisis, according to figures revealed by the Liberal Democrats.
Families with two children can be facing a bill for more than £1,000 a year for school lunches, a rise of more than £200 since 2019, because of inflation and rising energy and staff costs, according to the party’s estimates.
The increases have outstripped the funding schools receive for pupils on free school meals and the free lunches for infants up to year 2 in primary schools. This means schools have to make up the difference from their existing budgets as a result.
