Strikes by paramedics and nurses will go ahead from this week despite Rishi Sunak’s major U-turn on allowing new pay negotiations, with unions frustrated at ministers for not yet making a concrete offer.
The health secretary, Steve Barclay, has agreed to discuss the possibility of a lump-sum payment or backdating a future pay deal in order to end NHS strikes, according to multiple sources. Further talks are expected later this week, the Guardian understands, as well as negotiations between Barclay and the Treasury.
Though health unions publicly attacked the talks as disappointing, both union and government sources acknowledged a significant change in approach, with ministers prepared to ease the pain staff were experiencing because of the cost of living.
Ministers met health, rail and education unions over the course of Monday in an effort to avert a range of industrial action in the coming months.
Another key U-turn is widely expected to be part of a renewed effort to end rail strikes. One senior industry source said they believed ministers were open to dropping the controversial driver-only operation clause inserted in a deal before Christmas – which the unions have said was at the behest of the government.
The government will meet the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) and Network Rail later this week. Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT union, indicated that he would have further talks with the RDG negotiators representing train operators this week, fuelling hope that a resolution could be reached. Lynch and the RMT have regularly maintained they need binding written commitments, and are likely to want to see a redrafted formal offer which would not cross their longstanding red line on the role of guards and train crew.
The national executive of the train drivers’ union Aslef is due to meet next Monday to formally consider an offer of 8% over two years, made on Friday, that would include Sunday working – a deal that is likely to be rejected.
Unions including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison and Unite met Barclay on Monday morning, though there was widespread disappointment that the health secretary did not have a concrete offer to put forward.
But in a significant shift, Unison’s Sara Gorton said Barclay accepted that health workers would have to be offered more pay as part of the settlement for this year, 2022-23, despite having insisted for weeks that the pay deal was closed. “The secretary of state is very, very clear that resolving this dispute means not just talking about pay for the next period but actually pay for the current year. So very clear that resolving the dispute will take boosting pay ahead of 1 April,” she said.
Gorton also said Barclay asked the unions him to help him make the case to the Treasury for health getting more investment. “We’ll certainly do that,” she said.
The Guardian revealed on Monday that the government is understood to be considering offering a one-off payment to health workers, possibly in the form of a hardship payment to get them through the winter.
That offer was not made to unions in the meeting, but a government source said Barclay had made clear he was willing to consider the possibility of a lump sum or of backdated pay at a higher rate from January 2023 into the next round of pay talks for next year.
But union sources were scathing about Barclay’s apparent failure to offer any of his own new ideas on how to break the deadlock. One said they did not understand why the government had invited union representatives for talks about pay but then apparently made no new suggestions.
A Whitehall source said the talks had been “useful and constructive” and that there was more common ground. They said the government was taking “a new approach in the past few days”, but said Barclay wanted to have an open conversation about productivity and efficiency.
That would mean a more generous pay settlement if more money could be found through savings, they added. “There will be more money available if we can work together.”
Unite, one of the unions involved in the talks, said those terms put forward by the government were “an insult to our members”. The union’s Onay Kasab said: “All the government are interested in is saying that in order to justify a payment, then we need to come up with productivity savings in the NHS. That is absolutely ludicrous. This isn’t a factory we’re talking about.
“We are talking about people who are working well beyond their contracted hours anyway just to get the job done because they can’t hand patients over and because they care so much.”
The RCN branded the talks “bitterly disappointing” and said government “intransigence” was increasing the likelihood of next week’s nurses’ strikes going ahead. Joanne Galbraith-Marten, the RCN’s director of employment relations and legal services, said: “This intransigence is letting patients down. Ministers have a distance to travel to avert next week’s nurse strike.”
Downing Street admitted that the government was taking a “new approach” by discussing pay – having previously said it was off the table – and was prepared to go further than before on providing financial support to help struggling workers now. “We recognise that despite those high [pay] awards this year, global economic headwinds are putting household budgets under pressure,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said.
Ambulance workers in England and Wales are planning to strike for 24 hours on Wednesday, while action by nurses is scheduled for 18 and 19 January.
Teaching unions met the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, on Monday before the results of a formal ballot of NEU members on strike action due next week. Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, expressed frustration at the lack of progress in the union leaders’ meeting with Keegan.
He said: “The meeting was constructive but largely unsatisfactory in that our concerns over the long-term erosion of teacher pay and conditions, the inadequacy of this year’s pay award, and the ongoing teacher recruitment and retention crisis, remain unresolved.”
He said the education secretary had promised to look at union submissions to the pay review body for next year’s school teacher pay award, but no progress had been made on this year’s below-inflation award.