The NHS crisis won’t end soon

How long are the NHS strikes going to go on for? The collapse in agreement on nurses’ pay over the Easter recess has made it much harder for ministers to push the British Medical Association towards a deal on junior doctors’ pay, as well as undermining Rishi Sunak’s positioning as someone who gets things done. The Royal College of Nursing is now balloting its members on further strike action after they narrowly rejected the pay offer made by the government. Today, Health Secretary Steve Barclay was summoned to the Commons to answer an urgent question from Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting on how the government planned to stop further strikes. Both men have said publicly that they disagree with the walkouts, but of course the Labour line is that the strikes wouldn’t be happening because the party would somehow be better at negotiating with the unions. 

Streeting was particularly combative today, demanding that Barclay ‘look cancer patients in the eye, while they wait for life-saving treatment, and tell them to tough it out, as they are the ones who will pay the price for his failed approach’.