What we need to know about the government’s new law to require minimum service levels during strikes is that the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E has exceeded 50,000 a week for the first time, as The Independent reports today.
The idea that the crisis in the National Health Service demands legislation that allows nurses to be sacked if they go on strike without ensuring emergency cover is the wrong approach. We need more nurses, not fewer, and if that requires a relatively small amount of additional public spending, then so be it.
Rishi Sunak seems to be pursuing a twin-track approach to the threat of further strikes in the public services: dangling the carrot of a possible one-off or backdated payment in front of the nurses in particular, while brandishing the stick of anti-strike legislation behind all public-service workers, whether or not they are employed in the public sector.
