Rishi Sunak warned waiting list pledge will fail without NHS pay rise as he calls for ‘radical’ action
Rishi Sunak has called for “bold and radical” action to fix the NHS crisis as the leader of Britain’s nursing union warned he cannot meet his waiting list pledge without addressing pay.
The prime minister told health and social care leaders during an emergency summit in Downing Street on Saturday that it was a “collective responsibility” to free up hospital beds and slash ambulance waiting times.
But Ms Cullen said his pledge will fail unless he gives her members a pay rise.
She warned Mr Sunak the public would back nurses over the government if any were sacked as part of a new anti-strike crackdown and claimed the upcoming nurses’ walkout will be the biggest strike of its kind in the world.
In an interview with The Independent, Ms Cullen also challenged the “out of touch” prime minister and health secretary Steve Barclay to work a 14-hour shift in a crisis-hit emergency ward.
She said Mr Sunak could end the strikes this week if he takes up her offer to meet in the middle on pay, after saying she was willing to discuss a raise of 10 per cent instead of the 19 per cent originally asked for.
During the crunch summit to solve the chaos engulfing English hospitals, Mr Sunak warned health leaders “business-as-usual mindset won’t fix the challenges we face”. England’s chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty and NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard were among those summoned for the rare weekend meeting.
The prime minister is understood to be looking at ideas including the use of technology to help people stay out of hospital and increasing the number of “virtual wards”. He also highlighted that a small number of NHS trusts were responsible for a large proportion of serious issues, including long ambulance waits and waiting times for cancer care.
Downing Street has said it will publish recovery plans to improve ambulance and A&E waiting times “in the coming weeks”.
As Mr Sunak battles to bring the current crisis under control, Ms Cullen urged him to understand the scale of the upcoming nurses’ strike.
A 48-hour walkout in England from 18 January will involve more hospitals than similar strikes last month’s action.
She said: “We balloted around 320,000 nursing staff and my understanding is it has been the largest ballot of nursing staff in the world and it is the largest nursing strike in the world. We’ve also increased the number of organisations [such as NHS Trusts]. There are now 70 involved. First time around it was 46.”
She also revealed that she had received messages of support from senior politicians in several European countries. December’s strikes were headline news in France, Italy, Spain and Austria among others. The world was “watching in dismay”, Ms Cullen said.
She urged Mr Sunak to learn from the experience of other international leaders who were forced to back down in the face of ward walkouts, including Irish prime ministers in the first decade of this century.
“What this government should look to is how the leader of [Ireland] stepped in very quickly and did not allow both of those strikes to go beyond the first few days,” she said. “And took immediate action. And that was because the public pressure was enormous.”
On Wednesday, Mr Sunak set out his vision for the NHS, including a personal pledge to cut waiting lists. But he was criticised for offering nothing to end the current crisis or the strikes, which will also see ambulance staff take action later this month.
“He made a broad, bold statement that he was going to cut waiting lists, but he won’t unless he addresses the crisis in nursing … and the only way you are going to do that is to address the fundamental issue of nurses’ pay,” Ms Cullen said.
Strike action will have to escalate if the government continues to ignore nurses, she said, although no decisions have yet been taken on what that would look like.
Ms Cullen added: “He could bring it to a resolution this coming week – and avert industrial action. I will make myself available any night or any day. Let’s get round a table. Let’s have a discussion.
