As many sources note this morning, strikes are continuing. The ambulance workers' dispute this week will undoubtedly cause deaths, on which the right-wing media are fixating.
So, some questions:
- Who underfunded the ambulance service?
- Who has brought it to its knees due to failure to invest in A&E?
- How many people have already died as a result of this underfunding?
- How many more will die as staff in both services leave, unable to face the pressure of the job and their inability to make ends meet?
- How long is it before the government has to give in to the totally reasonable demand that public sector workers should not bear the cost of war in Ukraine, coupled to government dogma?
I am sure some more questions could be added to the list. My point is a simple one. What is happening is a systems failure created by persistent government neglect imposed on the NHS by a succession of Health Secretaries of whom the longest serving was Jeremy Hunt, now Chancellor.
I am quite sure no one in the NHS wants to strike. But they have no choice now. And yes, they do have an anti-government agenda, and rightly so. When the government has sought to destroy all that the NHS has done and could do for this country it is right to have an anti-government agenda.
But, as ever, where is Labour? Why isn't it right now an anti-Labour agenda as well as Wes Streeting appears no more sympathetic, or understanding, than the Tories?
What brought us to this sorry state where almost everyone but politicians can see what needs to be done?
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Absolutely agree. Hard to see way forward when a revolution is needed but there is no government-in-waiting. LibDems have some good people but as a body are barely noticeable. Greens have the best thinking but are ignored. The structure of our politics is collapsed & most current politicians should resign in shame.
Agreed.
The pay claim is cumulative in my opinion of those pay rises that were not granted from 2010 for no good reason at all.
A lot of chickens have come home to roost lately, all from eggs laid by the Tories – an out of control privatised energy market, Covid unpreparedness , the consequences of a suicidal BREXIT, lax standards in public life and procurement and now worker rebellion against the under funding of services which is essentially what low wages are.
And collusion with the Russian government.
And a reluctance to deal with the effects of global warming.
The Tories are not been fit to be in power.
One answer is the fear of the ‘popular’ press. Their voice is not the voice of the populace but of the billionaire class which owns and controls it.
I don’t think it is even a national ‘rich persons’ voice. There is an international dimension pushing the same concepts in a number of countries and recruiting a modern version of Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’.
The Tories are not going to shift unless they are forced to. They are not bothered about any loss of life due to their arrogance whether it is the sinking of the Belgrano, or the Grenfell Tower disaster due to the scrapping of safety regulations to the latest malicious attack on striking nurses and ambulance drivers. At one point it looked like we would never see the back of Boris Johnson until his lies and laziness were exposed to such an extent that Tory MPs could no longer stand the shame and disgust at his behavior Our only hope is that enough Tory MPs who have the smallest grain of conscience cease to support this senseless draconian malicious spite of Sunak and Hunt will withdraw their support..
Sunak on Sky has just repeated the cheap and easy evasion that the Government has accepted the the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body in full, to give nurses a pay rise of at least £1,400 – on top of a 3% pay rise last year when wider public sector pay was frozen.
This is both cynical and evasive; as far as I know the independent NHS Pay Review Body made its recommendations in early July. Six months ago. I stand to be corrected, but until then if anyone believes a decision made six months ago has much standing in the rapidly changing environment of a digitally driven cost of living crisis, in a post-pandemic, post-Brexit global supply chain world, in the middle of a European war; then they really shouldn’t be taking really serious public policy decisions.
Sunak also argued that the door to NHS talks “is always open” a brethtaking piece of humbug, since he knows very well the Health Minister has already made clear that the talks cannot be about pay. It is just species nonseense more suited to an anonymous social madia troll than a PM.
I keep writing these comments, simply because, for the first time in my life I find that I am consumed in waves of anger about this catastrophic failure of Government, from morning until night. The contemptible monstrousness of it all, and the tawdry, arrogant and downright ignorant ciphers running everything, is unendurable.
Join the club
Same here John and Richard. As the political right in the UK are apparently so fond of three word phrases (as a substitute for thinking or real policy) I’ve got one that describes the current government:
Corrupt incompetent liars. OK?
Fair
Here is the report. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-pay-review-body-thirty-fifth-report-2022
It was published on 19 July 2022, and affects 1.4 million NHS staff.
A few extracts:
“4.74 We are particularly concerned that the Staff Survey for England for 2021 showed a sharp decline in the percentage of staff saying there are enough staff in their organisation for them to do their job properly – from 38.5% in 2020 to 27.4% in 2021.”
“4.90 Breaking the figures down by staff group shows that general management (56%) and staff in central functions/corporate services (50%) were most likely to say that they were satisfied with pay. The staff groups least likely to say they were satisfied with their pay were nursing and healthcare assistants (17%), ambulance staff (23%) and registered nurses and midwives (28%).”
[ There you have it in a nutshell – barely a quarter of staff think there are enough people in place to do the job properly, and most of the front line staff think they are underpaid, but the managers are much happier. ]
“5.2 The Department of Health and Social Care told us that when it was set in January 2019, the Long-Term Plan assumed a headline pay uplift of 2% for 2022/23. … The department has an additional 1% “contingency” which it is making available for AfC pay, providing an overall affordable headline pay award of up to 3%. … ”
“5.20 At the present time, we judge there are substantive workforce risks related to recruitment, retention, motivation and morale.”
“5.28 Basic hourly pay of most of our remit group is below median hourly earnings across the economy as a whole. The rising costs of food, non-alcoholic drinks, housing, fuel and power are an important source of inflationary pressures. Lower income households spend a higher proportion of their incomes on these items. Thus, much of our remit group is especially vulnerable to current high inflation. …”
“5.30 … The UK Government has allocated 3% for an increase in pay for AfC staff. … The UK Government have said that they will not fund any increase beyond 3%.”
“5.43 Reflecting this, our 2022-23 pay recommendation is for a £1,400 consolidated uplift with effect from 1st April 2022 for all AfC staff to their full time equivalent salary. The £1,400 uplift should be enhanced for the top of Band 6 and at Band 7 so it is equal to a 4% uplift for those staff. The increase is to the rates which include the National Living Wage adjustments made on 1st April 2022 to Band 1 and 2. All points in the AfC pay scales to be increased as set out above. This recommendation would increase the overall AfC pay bill by an average of 4.8% across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”
And is the 2022/23 remit letter, published in November 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-pay-review-body-remit-letter-2022-to-2023/nhs-pay-review-body-remit-letter-2022-to-2023
“As the NHS budget has already been set until 2024 to 2025, it is vital that planned workforce growth is affordable and within the budgets set, particularly as there is a direct relationship between pay and staff numbers.”
Essentially, there is no more money, so please reach the “independent” conclusion I would like you to reach.
Thank you
Thanks Andrew. Well then, I don’t stand to be corrected. Could someone tell me why the so-called journalists asking the PM and ministers do not ask the direct, relevant quations, but lob underhand soft ball delivieries that fit so well the rehearsed answers the Minister has obviously prepared beforehand. In Parliament, Ministers no longer answer any specific questions, even in a debate; and the Speaker remains mute at an endless exchange of completely pointless monologues.
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman did not answer a single substantive question she was asked in the Rwanda debate, not even when asked simply to speak to the facts (for example on the quantum of Government expenditure on the policy). Parliament is dead. It does not function.
Ask Laura Kuennsberg
The answer is career prospects, I suspect
Career prospects or sheer ineptitude? Both would be an understandable reason for the lack of pointed questioning from the media.
I suppose the alternative is that most of these folk are in their particular jobs entirely because of their worldview which happens to mirror that of the right-wing media. Promotion of people who won’t rock the boat or ask too many awkward questions.
Which rather begs the same question about why most of Labour’s Front Bench are in their current roles…
From a personal standpoint, the Tories have blighted my life this last 12 years. I have been angry for much much longer than Mr Warren whose tolerance levels I lack. I loathe them – all of them – because of how they have behaved and the destruction they have wrought as well as their disregard for democracy. None of them must ever come near me or I will strike – and it will not be about withdrawing my labour either!
And so many times they have been caught out and yet still they endure – there is something unnatural about that in my view that reifies how our politics really works.
Putting aside those feelings though, I am still left with a profound lack of respect for them and most politicians in general. I think that too many politicians are just avatars for the real back seat drivers driving our politics – the political advisor class who are not accountable to voters at all and who seem to exist only to suffocate anything genuinely new and radical. Public opinion – which I think to be unreliable – is used too often to smother the fire of new ideas. Especially if it is the opinion of swing voters which is too in vogue.
I see the same suffocation in management in the public sector. Too many managers in the public sector are overpaid, and they are over paid in my view so that there is buy-in to government policy. It is the same in education where the canny go getting head teachers can all of a sudden find themselves with huge pay awards in the academy system – the ALMO option in social housing did the same for department heads who overnight became CEOs demanding CEO rates of pay from the private sector ‘CEO market’. The pay differentials between management and front line workers has gone awry – the same in the housing association sector too.
We’ve learnt about the true cost of all of this as we’ve have been haemorrhaging staff throughout 2022 and we are now struggling with capacity. We found out that during Covid, my org – an ALMO – the senior management team – decided to award themselves a 10% pay rise as a pat on the back for managing the pandemic! Yet most of them worked from home whereas those of us who came in during the pandemic got nothing special – 2.2% if that!
And this is the other thing that has crept in – the way in which the management class – aping the private sector – values itself over its resources.
And imagine employing and managing staff whom you knew will struggle on the wages you are paying? Who will be going to food banks?
It’s sick.
I have just been reading this article from Open Democracy.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-long-term-effective-altruism-wes-streeting/
Surely this is not what the labour front bench should be doing. I feel very worried now.
Very weird
Yes, I hope someone still in the party gets to read it and ask questions. Open Democracy wouldn’t put this on if they hadn’t researched thoroughly, or as thoroughly as the party would let them.