16 April 2023 , 16:43
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Nurses have vowed to go ahead with unprecedented strikes in A&E and cancer units as ministers refuse to budge on pay.
The Royal College of Nursing will stage a 48-hour walkout in a fortnight involving more hospital than ever before.
The union’s general secretary Pat Cullen said her members believed the government’s pay offer was not “fair nor reasonable”.
The RCN is preparing to hold a ballot on a further six months of possible strikes across England, which could last until Christmas.
Ms Cullen yesterday said she had “no plans” to coordinate walkouts with junior doctors, but did not rule out the possibility.
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The RCN has said it will hold a round-the-clock 48-hour strike from 8pm on Sunday, April 30 to 8pm on Tuesday, May 2, which will include the Bank Holiday Monday.
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said nurses would 'absolutely' not cancel a planned 48-hour strike (PA)It will be the biggest action to date as it will involve nursing staff working in emergency departments, intensive care units, cancer care and other services that were previously exempt.
Asked if the union will stop strike action, Ms Cullen told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg On Sunday programme yesterday: "No, our nurses will absolutely not do that.
"We have strike action for the end of this month and the beginning of May.
"Then we will move immediately to ballot our members.
"If that ballot is successful it will mean further strike action right up until Christmas."
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting appealed to the RCN to continue to protect emergency lifesaving care if it strikes again.
The Labour frontbencher said removing strike exemptions for A&E and cancer staff would be the “wrong thing to do”, adding: “I’d appeal to them to continue to protect patient care.”
Labour's Wes Streeting mocked the Conservatives for claiming 'our public services are in great shape' (Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said it was hard to see how removing emergency cover “wouldn’t endanger patient safety and dignity.”
But Ms Cullen said: "Nurses will not turn their backs on patients. When we are on strike at any time - we have had six days so far - nurses made sure at all times that patient safety was at the core of all decision-making.
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“We will continue to do that. Should there be a major incident or a particular incident that nurses will have to deal with during a strike they will return immediately, as they have done from picket lines right throughout this."
Tory Party chairman Greg Hands said ministers had already made a “full and final offer” to nurses. "We think that we've made a fair and reasonable offer," he told Sky News.
Mr Hands last night faced ridicule after he claimed in an interview with LBC that “our public services are in great shape”.
Mr Streeting said: "The Conservatives seem to think we've never had it so good. What planet are they living on?
"Tell that to the 7 million patients on NHS waiting lists, the 98 per cent of victims of rapes whose offenders weren’t charged last year, and the state school children being left behind by their privately educated contemporaries.”
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