On 10 February thousands of ambulance staff across five services in England are set to strike and Unison have warned that the government must stop “pretending the strikes will simply go away.”
The union has warned that strikes across the NHS will now happen everyday next week except Wednesday and unless the government has a “major rethink” over NHS pay and gets involved in “actual talks” the strikes will continue into March.
The union warned the ongoing pay dispute is most likely to double and that the whole of the ambulance service in England could strike.
Unison’s head of health Sara Gorton said: “After promising everyone a quicker pay review body process, the secretary of state’s own department failed to get its evidence in on time earlier this month.
“Ministers must stop fobbing the public off with promises of a better NHS, while not lifting a finger to solve the staffing emergency staring them in the face.
“The Government must stop playing games. Rishi Sunak wants the public to believe ministers are doing all they can to resolve the dispute. They’re not.
“There are no pay talks, and the Prime Minister must stop trying to hoodwink the public. It’s time for some honesty. Ministers are doing precisely nothing to end the dispute.
“The Government’s tactics seem to be to dig in, wait months for the pay review body report and hope the dispute goes away. It won’t. And in the meantime, staff will carry on quitting, and patients being let down.
“There can be no health service without the staff to run it. Ministers must open proper talks to end the dispute and put in place the urgent retention plan needed to boost pay and staffing across the NHS.”
