A Cambridgeshire trade council has written a damning letter to their MP Steve Barclay criticising how he, and the Conservative Party, are handling “this crisis” the country is in.
Wisbech, March and District Trades Council disapprove of the health secretary’s alleged claims that NHS nurses “have to work harder” and the government’s attempts at restricting the right to protest.
The group also states nobody “in health or social care wants to walk out on people they look after” and that emergency cover is agreed as part of strike action, contrary to what they say Mr Barclay has publicly implied.
Eleven members have co-signed the heated letter, which has now been sent to the North East Cambridgeshire MP.
It also claims this is a "crisis that has been building up for years” and “the result of more than a decade of underfunding” from the Conservatives.
The letter starts: “Did you really say that NHS staff need to be more efficient, that they have to work harder?
“Did you really think this was the thing to say when tens of thousands of NHS staff have taken to the picket lines because you are not listening to them?
“Do you really think that instead of seriously trying to reach agreement with hundreds of thousands of public sector workers you should raise a blatant distortion about critical cover as a pretext for anti-strike legislation?
“Do you really think it's the right time to reintroduce a bill restricting the right to protest?
“How can any worker, or member of the public, believe you genuinely want to resolve the issues that are forcing people to take strike action?”
It continues: “No-one who works in health or social care wants to walk out on people they look after.
“If they feel they have no option but to do so they never will unless adequate emergency care levels are agreed, unless they are satisfied they are not putting their patients at risk.
“Union leaders have all worked in these services and every union leader faced with strike action in a care sector knows that the first task is to agree emergency cover.
“It is insulting of you to imply that does not happen now or may not in the future.”
They also claim health workers are on the picket lines because Mr Barclay has “refused to listen to them” and it’s the “only way they can get their message across”.
Wisbech, March and District Trades Council do acknowledge money has been allocated to the NHS – a point Jonathan Djanogly, MP for Huntingdon, was keen to praise last week.
He welcomed the £2.9m allocated to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Integrated Care Board.
The money was part of a £200m fund from the Department of Health and Social Care announced earlier this month specifically for post-discharge care.
The BBC reported that the scheme involved buying thousands of beds in care homes to clear hospital beds for patients from A&E.
Mr Djanogly also highlighted an additional £50m had been allocated to create ‘modular’ hospital wards.
He said: “At this time of significant pressure on the NHS it is vital that the government is doing all it can to support both service delivery and patient safety.”
But the Wisbech, March and District Trades Council argue more health and care workers are needed to tend to the patients.
They state while there are 133,000 vacancies in the NHS and 165,000 in social care, the figures are still rising.
The letter says: “You can buy more beds but you cannot fill them unless there are nurses and care workers to tend to the patients in those beds. The money that's being allocated is too little too late.
“This is a crisis that has been building up for years, while you were a health minister and now while you're health secretary.
“It's the result of more than a decade of underfunding and withdrawal of resources.”
“It is time you stopped playing politics with people’s lives and got on with the real business of government.
“We demand that you sit down and talk seriously with the unions about how you can meet their members' concerns.”
Mr Barclay has been the health secretary since October 2022.
He, and his constituency office, have been approached to comment on the letter and its claims.
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