NHS strikes: Ray grills Grant Shapps on 'scoring political points'

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Unison General Secretary Christina McAnea accused the Government of being responsible for any deaths that occur during ambulance strikes as up to 10,000 ambulance staff walked out today in England and Wales.

Asked by TalkTV host Tom Newton-Dunn “whose fault is it if people die?”, she replied: “Absolutely the government’s. They have been totally irresponsible.

“The only time they called me in for a meeting was today, the day before the strike, and it’s completely irresponsible of them to refuse to open any kind of discussions or negotiations with us.”

She added: “We haven’t taken a decision yet about how long it will be or, or what groups we would pull out but as an example, the group that are coming out tomorrow, are our road crews.

“So that’s the people who are out and the ambulances, that’s the paramedics, the technicians, the specialist paramedics who go out to deal with specific issues. They’re the ones that are on strike tomorrow.

“What we haven’t done is bring out the control room staff. So the people who deal with the 999 calls will still be working tomorrow. In fact, they will be incredibly busy because they will be the ones who will be triaging all the calls, as they do every day. But that’s an option for us is that we bring out our 999 members as well.”

She continued: “I genuinely hope that when the government realise just how serious it is tomorrow when we take strike action that actually they will think twice about it and they’ll say ‘ok let’s come back and talk about this’.

“My advice to them would be don’t dig yourself into a hole that you can’t get out of.”

Steve Barclay said in the Daily Telegraph that unions had made a “conscious choice to inflict harm” on patients.

Unions have reacted with fury to the Health Secretary’s comments.

Rachel Harrison of the GMB union said: “Ambulance workers are seething at such a crude, insulting attempt to divert attention from the Government’s continued chaos in the NHS.

“The public know it’s not ambulance workers who have presided over a decade of failure.

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“Already today paramedics and ambulance workers have left picket lines to attend to emergency calls. They’ll always put the public first.

“It’s time for the Government to follow their example.”

Sharon Graham, Unite general secretary, said: “To say that ambulance unions have taken a conscious choice to inflict harm on patients is a blatant lie.

“The unions have negotiated critical cover, including 999 calls, at a local level with hosts of NHS Trusts. That is how it is done.

“Stephen Barclay obviously doesn’t understand how these issues are dealt with in the NHS. That is an embarrassment for him and the Government. He has now lost all credibility. Clearly he isn’t the man for the job. He’s well past his sell by date.”

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Unite said both the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary were guilty of an “astonishing abdication of responsibility” as they use the Pay Review Board as a “smokescreen for doing nothing”.

Sharon Graham added: “Where is Rishi Sunak? He is, as usual, absent without leave. It is time we got some adults in the room. The Prime Minister should step up to the plate and meet the unions to negotiate a new deal. We’ll meet him on Christmas Day if needs be.

“In all my 25 years negotiating deals I have never seen such an abdication of leadership as that of the current posted-missing PM and the out of touch hapless Health secretary.”

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