An obtuse government refuses to discuss pay as 100,000 nurses strike on Thursday in 53 English NHS organisations. That’s despite an offer from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to lower its opening bid. Ambulance drivers follow next week, the most severe threat of all the strikes, as this struggling service already fails to reach people experiencing heart attacks and strokes.
Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, tells me an elderly close relative who just fell and broke a hip and shoulder was told to wait eight hours for an ambulance: it may be hard to separate the effects of the strikes from the “normal” austerity-stricken NHS. At a follow-up hospital visit recently after removal of a cancerous kidney, Streeting couldn’t get his test results: he blamed not the “lovely” staff who “really care”, but the plight of the NHS.
