‘GENUINELY I believe that they are looking that this is the moment that they can privatise the NHS,’ Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said yesterday.
Graham is joining striking North West Ambulance Service workers on the picket line in Chorley, Lancashire at 7.30am this morning as 2,500 Unite members in the West Midlands, North West and North East go on strike today.
Thousands of ambulance worker members of Unison and the GMB are also striking all over the country today.
Appearing on the Sophie Ridge Show on Sky News yesterday, Sharon Graham said: ‘The big issue of now is the NHS and what is going to happen in relation to the NHS.
‘I’ve heard different government ministers coming onto different programmes, your programme, other programmes, literally saying that they are in talks with unions and there have been no talks with unions.
‘And so we’re still in exactly the same position that we’ve been in for weeks. There’s another strike tomorrow, there’s an escalation of strikes over the coming weeks and Rishi Sunak I have to say is missing in action.
‘I don’t know where he is. He should be getting round the table. He’s the CEO. He is the key decision-maker.
‘It is clear Stephen Barclay can’t make a decision. So it’s either that Rishi Sunak is not up to this job, that he does not want to come into the negotiating room and to do this deal, or that there must be another reason as to why he is allowing this self-harm to happen to the NHS.’
Ridge said: ‘There have been some talks though right, Stephen Barclay has been talking to some union members, right?’
Graham replied: ‘But they’re not pay talks. And this is the problem. The big issue here is about pay. There is an issue where the ambulance workers, the nurses, the NHS are saying ‘We need a pay rise,’ the public is supporting that pay rise as you can see from the surveys and you’ve got the employer, in this instance the government, who will talk about anything, but they won’t talk about pay. They haven’t made any offer.’
Graham continued: ‘This employer, being the government, is not interested in doing a deal as far as the NHS is concerned. And I have to say, we are concluding now that there must be a much more sinister reason for this because this level of self harm is unprecedented.
‘The public are crying out. I came here in a cab this morning and the cab driver was saying “why don’t they just give a pay rise to the NHS?” Everybody wants that to happen. It’s almost like there is another reason for them doing what they are doing because it’s total incompetence otherwise.’
‘What is that other reason?’ asked Ridge, to which Graham replied: ‘Well I think that they are looking to privatise the NHS. Genuinely I believe that they are looking that this is the moment that they can privatise the NHS.
‘I said when I was on your programme last time that I was very concerned about the Chancellor who was the health secretary who wanted the NHS in the American trade deal and there was a big fight to make sure that it wasn’t in the American trade deal.
‘There is something unusual going on here. They will not come to the table. There are choices that can be made that means that we can pay for this. There is not a problem about paying, we’re the fifth richest country in the world. There is something going on here, otherwise they are at a level of incompetence not known because it’s unreal.’
