Can the government’s plan for the NHS solve the crisis in emergency care?

The images speak for themselves about the worst

crisis

the NHS in England has ever faced. There is now an attempt by the

government

to fix urgent and

emergency

care

services, but with some caveats, it does not return, for example, to the target of 95 patients treated in one and four hours. We are not sending that ambition in this statement because the impacts of the pandemic have been so severe that we need to set an ambition that is an ambitious but achievable goal and that is what we have done, so now it will be 76 of patients admitted, transferred or discharged within that time frame by March next year, the

plan

is to increase capacity with more hospital beds, more ambulances, increasing the workforce, speeding up hospital discharges and new community services to help keep people in their homes as it happens a promise of 5,000 new beds includes 4,000, some currently temporary beds that will be made permanent.

There is also a commitment for more than 800 new ambulances, including mental health ambulances, some of which will replace current stock. This is a

plan

aimed at speeding up access to

emergency

services, of course. but it's also about keeping people out of hospital in the community and in doing so they want better 111 services, things like virtual wards, but it's also a plan with a big gap - there's nothing about much-needed social

care

reform and little about the workforce plan, although the Prime Minister promised today that it would be published shortly, there are some very specific points about supporting foreign people to work in both the health and social care systems, and that's welcome because it's definitely an area where we've seen shortages for a long time. in recent years, but it seems pretty clear to me how the additional staff that the plan talks about will be hired and perhaps even more importantly how the staff we already have will be supported because this is actually a plan for next winter. and we have to get there next winter from where we are now.

Many of the ideas in the plan are already being used across the country, but this is an attempt to widen the dissemination of good practice. Warwick Hospital, for example, has a frailty service that works with ambulance teams. aimed at keeping older people at home, how can you quantify that the service is working? I think probably because of the number of people staying at home, keeping people out of the hospital, managing them, you know, in virtual world environments. I think probably when you bring people in that actually when people come in it's bad and you know they need to go to the hospital and that means you're doing the right thing really avoiding unnecessary things.

The mission essentially gives people in their homes the emergency care plan offers little in the short term. term and the

government

will be hopeful that flu and flu numbers continue to decline, so there will be some relief in the pressures on NHS staff and patients to get them through the coming months. Well, it's time to turn to the teachers, last minute conversations with education. Secretary of State today aiming to re

solve

a pay dispute have failed, so the biggest teachers' strike in years will take place on Wednesday. Serena barcusing is outside the Department of Education for us tonight.

Serena, were these talks between education union leaders and Secretary of State Julian Keegan really the last chance to reach an agreement before the action planned for Wednesday. We now know that 23,000 schools in England and Wales will be affected and, although not all teachers are prepared to strike, around a hundred thousand staff will leave on Wednesday, I believe. It's fair to say that the unions were not particularly optimistic coming into this, the meeting had been scheduled for about 25 minutes, lasted about an hour, but then they came out to say that the education secretary was wasting an opportunity at the time.

It seems like they are trying to keep a united front so that no one gets a pay rise anywhere, I wouldn't say I thought she was fighting for teachers in government right now and I think she should because she is the Chief Minister for Education, She is the Chief Minister for our children's education, now teachers are asking for a pay rise of about 12, which is above inflation, and they say that is because they have seen a pay cut of 20 real terms since 2010. Now the government is willing to increase this, they say they are willing to go up to around five percent, but they also say they can't do anything that they think will increase inflation, we have to cut inflation in half because that helps everyone.

In our country, that is the most important thing. We know that all of this disruption is due to the war in Ukraine and the post-pandemic impacts of inflation. Now we know that's there but we also know it's short term, we have to focus on halving inflation otherwise a pound in everyone's pocket is going to be worth less for longer now this is the first of seven planned strikes and the union leaders today said there was an indication that they thought the government might come back with a better offer and if they do they say that will prevent these other these other sects from going ahead well let's find out thanks Serena let's Jackie and Leeds Jackie and not many teachers leaving this Wednesday which is shaping up to be the biggest day of industrial action in more than a decade some train and bus drivers civil servants University lecturers and security guards are also planning strikes, the next strike of nurses is scheduled for Monday and this afternoon it was announced that the firefighters had voted overwhelmingly to strike after previously rejecting a five per cent pay offer to join me, now Corsa Jan, deputy principal of a primary school from Leeds and Maxine Wade who works as a nursing leader and Matt rack to the fire brigade The general secretary of the union is in south west London I want to go and see him first, call Sir John, if I may, the master, it will be difficult to see how The country works on Wednesdays, schools are closed, trains and buses do not move, huge swings in the workforce do not work, did you have any qualms about adding more scruples? of course yes, no one goes into any profession, especially in the public sector, you know none of us have.

We have gone in there, let's face it, yes we have gone in there because we are committed and unfortunately as you see the negotiations have fallen on deaf ears so there is no other course of action that we have had to do that and the system definitely It's broken, isn't it? I mean, you can see that the schools are trying hard. The teachers are on strike. We don't want to strike, but they have forced us to. We have four out of 10 teachers in five years. qualify to resign from the profession citing painful conditions working excessively underpaid since 2010 we have not had a salary increase in real terms that cut 20 and now recently we were told that yes the government will give us five percent but it What they didn't say was that that five percent has to come from school budgets, which is the children's money and the schools' money, so that is immoral.

I mean the Education Secretary today repeating a line that the Prime Minister has said many times, you know it will only fuel inflation, yes, and that affects everyone. it does, but we also have to keep in mind that we have people in the public sector, teachers, nurses, firefighters, etc., who go to food banks because they can't afford to put dinner on the table and us working more than 60 hours a week, teachers are on their knees at the moment with overwork and this is not sustainable, leaving the profession rather than entering it, we have a great

crisis

on the horizon because every profession, whether doctor, nurse or journalist, you need a good level of education, let me bring in Maxine Wade, a nurse, the Prime Minister today talks a lot about the Health Service and says he would love for you and your colleagues to get more money, but he doesn't want to have to increase taxes, he says.

Being Prime Minister is not an easy job, you have many things to balance. I would soon tell Rishi that being a nurse in the NHS or being a paramedic or doctor these days is not an easy job when you have a heavy workload. Patients when they have difficulty working 12-hour shifts in which they usually do not have a break. Those who have very difficult jobs understand that it is a difficult job for him to balance the economy, but he needs to think about what he values ​​and what we should. value as a society and it should be public sector workers, such as teachers and nursing staff, who are struggling to make ends meet and are paying the cost of, to be honest, their financial mismanagement.

I mean there won't be any movement on salaries today, but he promises nonetheless. thousands of extra hospital beds and new ambulances to help ease the pressure on the NHS, you have to thank that presumably I think it's a start Jackie, but you need paramedics to drive those ambulances and you need nursing staff to look after the patients in those beds, um and It's also not about one of the biggest issues, which is the lack of funding and health and social care, which is why we have so many problems getting patients to hospital. I think it's a start, but it would be better if Rishi did it soon.

Can Steve Barkley, the health secretary, engaged with unions like Unite and like the Royal College of Nursing to get a decent pay offer on the table and start negotiations because a lot of the negotiations haven't even started yet, I mean his constant arguing with the nurses. Is there a pay review body that wants to interfere? I get it, but the independent bear review body is not that independent and unfortunately they are saying they can't go against it, but four times in the last year the government has vetoed it. the peer review body so I don't know why they can't do that for me Matt Raj if I can come to you first time in 20 years the firefighters union voted to strike please explain the thinking behind it of that.

Consider how your other guests have said that people are fed up with falling wages. It's a bit rich to hear government ministers or the Prime Minister say that in the public services our service has been ruined for 12 years, we have never seen the magnitude of the job losses. fire stations have closed fire trucks, employment numbers have been reduced and twelve thousand firefighting jobs are being cut at the same time firefighters see their salaries attacked year after year, so like others we have firefighters sent to banks of food, people are just sick of If they were treated this way, we were insulted, we were applauded during covid along with other key workers, where we saw who is really important in society, the ordinary workers who helped our communities and then as soon as it was over, they told us all. we have to tighten our belts, while some people did very, very well.

I don't believe it, there is no money, that some people are getting richer and richer every year, while the rest of us are told to tighten our belts just to make it clear how it works. What works for firefighters for their members is that the dispute is directly with their employers, right? It is not directly with the government. That's true, we governments are not involved and, frankly, I don't want the government to get involved directly. We do not have a salary review body and as we have learned from Health, we do not want to have a salary review body, we negotiate with our employers, but the truth is that the government controls the purse strings, about half of the funding comes from the central government and half of local government, so governments have cut central funding so they clearly play a role, they have played a role in undermining our service for the last 12 years and they are obstructing a deal, but we have offered to meet with our employers, uh, we will.

We are meeting with them on February 8th, we hope there is a chance that they will realize the seriousness of the situation, realize the level of anger among the firefighters and avoid a strike by improving their pay offer because, briefly, How does a strike work? Network we understand the disruption that has been caused, for example, in schools. You know parents may not be able to send their children to schools, but people will worry if firefighters are on strike. What is the minimum standard level? Do you know what happens if someone is home? and a fire starts, of course, it is a very serious step and we do not underestimate it at all and we want to try to avoid it in terms of coverage.

We have a national agreement regarding thepotential to return to work. In certain circumstances, but actually in previous disputes, employers and chief executives have the responsibility to establish agreements and quotes can be found from ministers in those disputes assuring the public that they have made those plans, that we are not involved in those discussions and That's really a question for the government, but the point is to avoid the strike, make an improved payment offer and avoid a strike map summary for the time being. I just want to tell you two. Public support is essential, isn't it? I know that nurses often have very, very good support.

Do you worry as a teacher because when you go out and strike it means that many people can't go to work properly? I'll give you an example today. I had a meeting at school. for any parent to come and discuss what their concerns are and find out about this, all the parents and the room was full of parents saying: what can we do? It's an online petition. Can we go support him at the demonstration? There are teachers but the parents tell us we know how hard you work we know that during the confinement we could not teach a lesson at once let alone you know a class full of children so we have the support and what we need is the government to be listening and responding and, as Maxine said, we have to make sure that we are negotiating and moving forward.

I mean people lose their pay every time they go on strike, how much longer? Can this continue because you've already been on strike and there's no sense of movement? Well, we are committed like other public sector workers because we need real change in this country and ultimately it is the patients who suffer every day from this government's cuts over the last 13 years and it's not just the days of strikes that are causing these actions by desperate workers who are desperately trying to get better wages and better working conditions. Yes, we are obviously losing money every time we strike, but we are committed to continuing to do so because we are determined to make real change and we are not going to give up, we will have to leave it at that, but to the three of you, thank you very much for speaking with us today .