How much longer will NHS strikes be allowed to risk patient safety?

Patients in Devon are not supposed to call their local GPs to check on their appointments. Residents in Gloucestershire have been encouraged to avoid ringing 999 unless the situation is life-threatening. Once again, people are being asked to stay away from the health service – not because of a pandemic this time, but because today marks the largest workers’ strike in the NHS’s history. Royal College of Nursing union members are walking out in over a third of NHS England Trusts, with over 10,000 GMB and Unite ambulance workers joining them.

As we’ve learned from this ongoing series of strikes, they don’t tend to create mass queues outside hospitals or photos of overrun surgeries. People tend to listen – and stay away. Calls to the London Ambulance Service fell by a quarter last month, on the day workers had walked out. The month before, the West Midlands Ambulance trust saw calls fall by a staggering 70 per cent.