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Evening Standard

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Andy Burnham

This is a fight for the very survival of the NHS and we need a bold solution

NHS Nurse Bristol

Andy Burnham, Manchester Mayor.
(Picture: Amanda Searle)

Earlier this week, when talks between the Health Secretary and NHS unions broke down, my mind went back to a conversation I had just over a decade ago with an A&E nurse from Bristol. I relay it here as it might just help shed a bit of light on the current stand-off.

I was shadow health secretary at the time and down in the South-West because the region had been chosen by the coalition government as the pilot area for new regional NHS contracts, including regional pay rates. David Cameron clearly believed Labour had left behind an overly-generous national NHS pay framework which needed to be broken up.

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