Strikes UK – latest news: National highways workers to stage industrial action

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the health service “coped as well as could be expected” on Wednesday during the strike by ambulance workers.

He also warned that the NHS could not “go on coping” with a winter of strikes and industrial action as he urged the government and trade unions to come to an agreement.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “The NHS coped as well as could be expected.”

He said it was due to planning and thanked the public for their response, adding there appeared to be more demand on primary care services.

“We coped as best we could yesterday, but it’s incredibly important to recognise that we cannot go on coping with industrial action in the NHS because each time it happens, there are direct consequences, but also all sorts of knock-on effects.

“We will repeat the call, which is to trade unions and to the Government to step away from rhetoric and step towards negotiation. We can’t drift into more and more industrial action.”

Junior minister Mark Spencer has appealed to striking workers to “come off the picket line, to come back to work”.

Appearing on Times Radio the morning after strikes by ambulance workers, the Tory MP declined to get into speculation about how the pay review process might operate into the coming year.

He stressed that it was not just public-sector workers who are “under pressure”.

The food, farming and fisheries minister told the broadcaster: “I think the answer first of all is to come off the picket line, to get back to work.

“The pay review body is an annual process, of course that will happen again as we move into next year, but we need to accept this year, and then of course next year’s pay review body will take into account the inflation that we’ve seen over the last 12 months which is squeezing everybody, not just those who are working in the public sector.

“As a society, we’ve got to try and find a way through this together. We’ve got to try and balance the burden of this challenge across the whole of society.

“There are lots of people working in the private sector who are also under huge pressure given the impact of the pandemic and Putin’s war.

“They’re also feeling pressure and pain. They’re also seeing increased bills. They can’t afford to see their taxes go up or their costs go up just like everyone else.”

The RMT union has revealed that more than 40,000 workers across Network Rail and 14 train operating companies will stage a series of 48-hour walk-outs.

Industrial action is due to take place over the key Christmas period, with members walking out from 6pm on 24 December until 7am on 27 December. Most trains do not run on 25 and 26 December anyway, but those aiming to travel by rail to see loved ones either side of Christmas Day will be affected.

My colleague Helen Coffey reports:

To win a strike, or at least a high-profile one that affects the public on the most vital level, it is first necessary to win the argument. On that basis, victory for the nurses and paramedics is all but inevitable.

Indeed, it is fair to say that ministers have barely made the case for imposing the below-inflation pay increase recommended by the NHS independent pay body. All we ever hear is that the offer is non-negotiable, which is unreasonable, and that the nurses’ claim would be inflationary, which is at least debatable.

Tacitly, the public mood seems to be that they would much rather tolerate a little more inflation and taxation, and not have to wait hours for an ambulance and then more hours to be admitted to a ward.

The prime minister is being very foolish if he thinks he can just sit and do nothing while the crisis in the health service – exacerbated but not caused by this rare industrial action – worsens.

He might like to consider the impact of a hard Brexit which decimated an already denuded workforce, and the rejection of the EU’s offer to delay the implementation of this when a global pandemic came along, enabling a failing government to blame Covid for any and every negative associated with Brexit.

Then there are the government partygoers who regularly clapped the healthcare professionals who were dying as they attempted to cope with Covid, using ineffective PPE which raked in millions for Tory pals. “Let the bodies pile high!” is a statement not attributed to nurses or paramedics, but to the Tory prime minister of the time, writes a reader in letter to The Independent.

As striking NHS workers brought ambulances across the UK to a standstill – apart from in the most urgent and life threatening cases – families were seen bringing their unwell relatives to hospital in cars.

In Brighton, a four wheel drive car was seen pulling up outside the A&E entrance of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, before nurses carried someone from the back of the car into the hospital.

Soldiers were also spotted helping to move patients whilst covering for staff who had joined the walkouts.

Read the details in this report from Eleanor Sly:

Tens of thousands of ambulance staff walked out on Wednesday, with almost all of the ambulance trusts in England declaring so-called critical incidents and many trusts stating that they were facing huge pressure even before strikes began.

Senior health figures have said the “fallout from strike action is likely to spill over into the coming days” with high levels of emergency demand from patients who have delayed seeking care.

My colleague Rebecca Thomas and Kate Devlin report:

The government could fast-track an NHS pay rise next year after 48 hours of historic strikes by nurses and paramedics, according to reports.

Thousands of nurses picketed on Tuesday while ambulance staff staged their biggest strike in 30 years on Wednesday, and the Daily Telegraph reported that health secretary Steve Barclay is poised to offer an expedited pay deal.

It comes after unions and ministers remained in stalemate over pay negotiations last night.

Doctors in Wales are considering going on strike for the first time, the British Medical Association Cymru has said.

Almost two-thirds of hospital doctors surveyed by the union this month said they would be willing to take some form of industrial action, including strikes, over their current pay and conditions.

The announcement comes after a week of walkouts by nurses and ambulance staff across the country calling for better wages and conditions.

The BMA’s Welsh Council chairwoman, Iona Collins, called the result of the survey “upsetting to all” and said it is “gut-wrenching for doctors to consider walking away from work”.

The National Highways strikes will escalate further on 30 December when PCS members across the traffic officer service in the West Midlands and south-west England begin action and on 6 January when it reaches the East Midlands and eastern England.

In addition, all PCS members in National Highways, working for the traffic officer service, will take action on 3 and 4 January.

PCS has served formal notice on the Department for Work and Pensions of extended strike action in parts of the department in the first week of January as part of its national campaign.

Benefit processing members in Doncaster Crossgate House, a threatened closure site, have been on strike since Monday and are joined today by the rest of the PCS members at the site.

All PCS members in the building will now take strike action during the first week in January.

Action by PCS members in Toxteth, City and Duke Street jobcentres in Liverpool will be extended to 7 January, the union announced.