Rishi Sunak has called for “bold and radical” action to fix the NHS crisis as the leader of Britain’s nursing union warned he cannot meet his waiting list pledge without addressing pay.
The prime minister told health and social care leaders during an emergency summit in Downing Street on Saturday that it was a “collective responsibility” to free up hospital beds and slash ambulance waiting times.
But Ms Cullen said his pledge will fail unless he gives her members a pay rise.
She warned Mr Sunak the public would back nurses over the government if any were sacked as part of a new anti-strike crackdown and claimed the upcoming nurses’ walkout will be the biggest strike of its kind in the world.
In an interview with The Independent, Ms Cullen also challenged the “out of touch” prime minister and health secretary Steve Barclay to work a 14-hour shift in a crisis-hit emergency ward.
She said Mr Sunak could end the strikes this week if he takes up her offer to meet in the middle on pay, after saying she was willing to discuss a raise of 10 per cent instead of the 19 per cent originally asked for.
During the crunch summit to solve the chaos engulfing English hospitals, Mr Sunak warned health leaders “business-as-usual mindset won’t fix the challenges we face”. England’s chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty and NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard were among those summoned for the rare weekend meeting.
The prime minister is understood to be looking at ideas including the use of technology to help people stay out of hospital and increasing the number of “virtual wards”. He also highlighted that a small number of NHS trusts were responsible for a large proportion of serious issues, including long ambulance waits and waiting times for cancer care.
Downing Street has said it will publish recovery plans to improve ambulance and A&E waiting times “in the coming weeks”.
As Mr Sunak battles to bring the current crisis under control, Ms Cullen urged him to understand the scale of the upcoming nurses’ strike.
A 48-hour walkout in England from 18 January will involve more hospitals than similar strikes last month’s action.
She said: “We balloted around 320,000 nursing staff and my understanding is it has been the largest ballot of nursing staff in the world and it is the largest nursing strike in the world. We’ve also increased the number of organisations [such as NHS Trusts]. There are now 70 involved. First time around it was 46.”
She also revealed that she had received messages of support from senior politicians in several European countries. December’s strikes were headline news in France, Italy, Spain and Austria among others. The world was “watching in dismay”, Ms Cullen said.
She urged Mr Sunak to learn from the experience of other international leaders who were forced to back down in the face of ward walkouts, including Irish prime ministers in the first decade of this century.
“What this government should look to is how the leader of [Ireland] stepped in very quickly and did not allow both of those strikes to go beyond the first few days,” she said. “And took immediate action. And that was because the public pressure was enormous.”
On Wednesday, Mr Sunak set out his vision for the NHS, including a personal pledge to cut waiting lists. But he was criticised for offering nothing to end the current crisis or the strikes, which will also see ambulance staff take action later this month.
“He made a broad, bold statement that he was going to cut waiting lists, but he won’t unless he addresses the crisis in nursing ... and the only way you are going to do that is to address the fundamental issue of nurses’ pay,” Ms Cullen said.
Strike action will have to escalate if the government continues to ignore nurses, she said, although no decisions have yet been taken on what that would look like.
Ms Cullen added: “He could bring it to a resolution this coming week – and avert industrial action. I will make myself available any night or any day. Let’s get round a table. Let’s have a discussion.
“I think they owe that to the profession, to all those 320,000 nurses. And they owe it to every patient in this country, particularly those 7.2 million sitting on waiting lists year on year, to get around a table.”
On Friday Mr Sunak refused to rule out that nurses could be sacked as part of his new crackdown, swerving the question in a broadcast interview. She described “any suggestion that they would sack any nurse… simply because nurses are standing up for their patients and the NHS” as “disheartening” given that there were currently 47,000 vacancies in the UK.
Describing the prime minister as “out of touch” with the realities of the current crisis, she challenged Mr Sunak and his health secretary to work a 14-hour shift in an emergency department.
She said: “From 7am to late into the evening, when a number of those hours will be unpaid, when the nurses should be off shift and home but they have no one to hand their patients on to.
“They need to just walk in the shoes of those nurses for a few of those shifts. And I think that would make better decisions.”
Leaving the NHS Recovery Forum on Saturday, consultant physician James Dunbar told reporters he was “confident that action will be taken” to address the crisis – but not optimistic it would be dealt with before spring.
“These are difficult problems to fix though, so I think it’s unlikely we’ll have it sorted by the end of this winter,” he said. Dr Dunbar said that “a lot of” senior clinical leaders taking part were “saying the same thing”, adding: “The prime minister seemed to understand that.”
Royal College of Emergency Medicine president Adrian Boyle meanwhile said the crisis is “fixable” and welcomed emergency care being “recognised as a priority”.
A Downing Street spokesperson said “easing the immediate pressures whilst also focusing on the long-term improvement of the NHS” are among Mr Sunak’s key commitments.
“That’s why we’re bringing together the best minds from the health and care sectors to help share knowledge and practical solutions so that we can tackle the most crucial challenges such as delayed discharge and emergency care,” she added.
A Department of Health and Social Care source said the health secretary plans to host an “honest and constructive conversation about what is affordable for NHS pay in the coming year”.
A government spokesperson said: “The health and social care secretary wants to have an honest conversation with unions, including the RCN, about what is affordable in pay settlements for next year during these challenging times, and is keen to meet for discussions as soon as possible.
“We have accepted the recommendations of the independent NHS Pay Review Body in full and have given over 1 million NHS workers a pay rise of at least £1,400 this year. This is on top of a 3 per cent pay increase last year when public sector pay was frozen and wider government support with the cost of living.”
