Emergency service workers are set to strike on December 21 2022, to demand better pay. The strike action is happening as the UK is witnessing the worst ambulance handover delays on record. Thousands of patients are having to wait outside A&Es up and down the country in the back of ambulances, as backlogs are cleared.
A parliamentary inquiry was launched in September 2022, amid media reports of “appalling waits” for ambulances – up to 40 hours long – and lives left at risk on a daily basis. Adrian Boyle, the head of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, recently told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that this is forcing ambulances to be “wards on wheels” and could cause excess deaths in England.
