18th August 2022

Scotland’s nurses to be balloted for strike
Nursing and midwifery staff in Scotland are prepared to strike over pay. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Royal College of Midwives (RCM, Unite, Unison and GMB have all rejected the 5% pay offer from the Scottish Government, with the majority voting in favour of taking strike action in consultative ballots.

Wes Streeting’s plan
Behind a paywall. In essence Labour will – “harness data and technology to transform the way patients get care”, “publish a workforce plan”, “fix the broken care system” but doesn’t say how, “will recruit 8,500 extra mental health professionals”, “use spare private sector capacity to get NHS waiting lists down while we set to work making the NHS so good that people never need private healthcare.” But doesn’r say enything about increasing overall funding.

Covid heroes hardest hit by cost of living crisis
Losing their homes, struggling for food – cleaners, health and transport workers say strikes are their only option. Claire, 45, has worked as a carer for seven years. In April, she was evicted after falling into rent arrears. She now lives with her brother. Heart-rending stories like this are common place amongst low paid NHS staff and transport workers.

34 hospital buildings are unsafe
Health minister Maria Caulfield admitted that thirty-four hospital buildings in England have roofs made of concrete that is so unstable they could fall down at any time.

Privatisation linked to 557 treatable deaths
Researchers found that every additional 1% of annual CCG budgets that went on outsourcing was associated with a rise in treatable mortality. “These results suggest that increased outsourcing to the private sector could lead to a decline in the quality of care provided to patients.”