How will you protect the patients if you’re on a picket line? I ask a nurse friend, somewhat anxiously. “It’s funny,” she muses. “We are too important to strike; but not important enough to be properly paid.” As Britain heads into a winter of discontent, nurses who worked tirelessly through the pandemic deserve a hearing more than any other public sector group. But it’s not only better pay they need. The NHS has failed them at every level.The Royal College of Nursing is demanding pay rises of 5 per cent above inflation, which the government can’t afford. But nor can the country afford inaction. Cancer backlogs have reached all-time highs. Poor health has become a brake on economic growth.
The NHS now feels like a vast sinking ship, with staff retiring early or jumping off in frustration, patients facing long waits, and leaders struggling to plug the holes. A vicious cycle of stress and feeling undervalued is leading GPs to become locums and nurses to turn to agency work. “We can’t see the cavalry coming over the hill,” a former RCN president, Dame Anne Marie Rafferty, tells me: “only a mountain of work.”
The immediate challenge is to head off the strikes — and with more than just warm words. But ministers must also think about the system they want to see after inflation abates.