People who are violent or abusive to NHS staff should be taught the “hard way” and turned away from care, according to the Health Secretary.
While access to the NHS is a “right” it is not a system that people can “walk all over”, Wes Streeting said in a speech on Wednesday.
It came as he pledged to “act to keep NHS staff safe at work” by making the reporting of violent incidents mandatory.
He also vowed that charging patients for care will happen “over his dead body”.
Speaking to delegates at the Unison National Healthcare Service Group Conference in Liverpool, he said: “Accessing the NHS is a right, but that right doesn’t come with a licence to abuse staff.
“And the right to access treatment does not mean that some have to put up with whatever you throw at them, whether words or assaults, or worse.
“And staff have got to have the right to say no, and to turn people away and to start teaching people the hard way that this isn’t a system, and these aren’t people, that you can walk all over or worse.
“Until we start genuinely enforcing that and making zero tolerance mean zero tolerance, this will continue.”
The comments echo those made by Mr Streeting last August after the Southport attacks and the riots that followed.
He said his admiration for the healthcare staff at the front line of the “brutal attacks” turned to anger as rioters “exploited that pain as an excuse to rampage through our streets”.
He added: “Filipino nurses came under attack from racist thugs on their way into work wearing their NHS uniforms, GP surgeries closed early out of fear of rioters.
“A Nigerian care worker saw his car torched. These people came to our country to care for our sick and vulnerable. They busted guts day in, day out, to keep us well.”
Citing the latest NHS staff survey, which found almost 15% of health service workers had faced physical violence, Mr Streeting said: “What happened after Southport was an extreme but it wasn’t a one-off.
“One in every seven people employed by the NHS have suffered violence at the hands of patients, their relatives or other members of the public.”
The Health Secretary used his speech on Wednesday to announce more support to protect staff against violence at work, including encouraging workers to report incidents and ensure information is collected at a national level.
He said: “We will act to keep NHS staff safe at work. Incidents will have to be recorded at national level.
“Data will be analysed so that those most at risk can be protected. Trust boards will be made to report on progress they are making to keep staff safe.
“Protecting staff from violence is not an optional extra. We are making it mandatory.
“Zero tolerance for violence and harassment of NHS staff campaigned for by Unison, denied by the Tories, delivered with a Labour Government.
“The NHS was founded by the Labour government. Our values run through its DNA.
“Yet when it comes to the NHS as an employer, too often, it fails to live its Labour values.
“The result is people walking out of the NHS that we can’t afford to lose. We invest huge sums of money into training the NHS workforce, then they are treated like crap, forced to leave the health service and often leave the country.
“British taxpayers are investing millions in doctors, nurses, paramedics and healthcare assistants, only for them to turn up treating patients in Canada or Australia.
“We’ve got to retain the talent we have in the health service and treat our staff with respect they’ve earned.”
On the subject of potentially charging patients for NHS care, Mr Streeting said: “The failure of public services to meet the needs of the people is one of the fertilisers of populism we see across liberal democracies, and as the NHS has been driven to the worst crisis in its history by the Conservatives, the vultures on the right have begun to circle.
“Without a hint of shame for her party’s record, Kemi Badenoch says there needs to be a national conversation about the principle of free at point of use.
“Nigel Farage says we need to change the funding model and move to an insurance-style system and charge patients to use the health service – conference, over my dead body.
“We will always defend the NHS as a public service free at the point of use.”
