Prime Minister “in hibernation” while NHS workers struggle with low pay

Commenting on the biggest NHS strike in history, Terry Ledlie, Chair of Yeovil Constituency Labour Party said: “NHS workers have suffered a 13 year pay squeeze. This grossly unfair treatment is pushing health service staff to breaking point and undermining the provision of good public healthcare . It’s time for Rishi Sunak to step in and make sure that funding is provided but he seems to be feigning hibernation. Worse still, the Government has tried to use the NHS Pay review bodies as a fig-leaf to justify squeezing NHS workers. In reality, Government controls the remit of the review bodies and has even chosen to ignore some past recommendations when they thought they were too high.Yeovil MP Marcus Fysh has accused the unions of “making huge pay demands” and seems to favour banning strikes in public services. There is no recognition of the real problems facing staff in the health service.”

Terry Ledlie added,“These are the same old deeply flawed arguments used by successive Tory Governments because they don’t want to negotiate. They would rather try to use weasel-words to turn people against hard working staff who are legitimately standing up for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Everybody knows that this dispute can only be resolved by a properly negotiated agreement that delivers fair pay. It’s about time that the Government stopped playing games and put their efforts into resolving this dispute rather than prolonging it by the use of harsh tactics that are damaging the health service. The long running-pay squeeze means that local hospitals suffered a record number of staff resignations last year and the NHS is a whole is now struggling with a record number of vacant posts. This country needs a properly funded and properly paid NHS. Decent pay would make it possible to fill vacancies and help more patients. Government holds many billions of pounds in reserves and could easily afford to deal with this issue fairly but has so far chosen to blame staff and their trade unions. This is dereliction of their duty to make sure that we have the best health service that can be delivered. The NHS badly needs a decent pay rise and the government can and must now act swiftly to deal with this fairly.”