STRIKING ambulance workers and their union leaders responded with fury at Tory Health Secretary Barclay’s article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, in which he accused them of ‘a conscious choice to inflict harm on patients’.
Mass pickets outside ambulance stations in towns and cities all round the country received a cacophany of hoots from passing motorists as the thousands of striking ambulance workers received the same huge level of support that their striking nurse colleagues had experienced the day before.
Following Barclay’s attack, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: ‘To say that ambulance unions have taken a conscious choice to inflict harm on patients is a blatant lie.
‘The unions have negotiated critical cover, including 999 calls, at a local level with hosts of NHS trusts. That is how it is done.
‘Stephen Barclay obviously doesn’t understand how these issues are dealt with in the NHS. That is an embarrassment for him and the government. He has now lost all credibility. Clearly he isn’t the man for the job. He’s well past his sell-by date.’
Patricia McKeown, Ulster Regional Secretary of Unison, said: ‘The UK government is today taking a scandalous swipe at striking health workers, blaming them for putting lives at risk. But who really is to blame for the crisis in the NHS is plain for all to see.’
There was a mass picket at Waterloo Ambulance Station in central London, where Unison General Secretary Christine McAnea declared: ‘The government has chosen to use disingenuous tactics to derail and smear this strike action.’
At Chase Farm’s lively picket in Enfield, north London, Unison rep Richard Ferro told News Line: ‘Even during Covid we were attending 6-8 patients a day, but in the last few months it’s been 2-3 patients and sitting at the hospital for hours waiting for a bed or staff to come and help us.’ He went on: ‘I think this a government ploy to privatise the NHS.’ When asked what he thought about a general strike, he said: ‘It would make a massive difference’.
At Deptford Ambulance Station in South East London, Tim Fisher, Unison rep said: ‘There is huge support from the public. Even when we went out to a family who had been waiting 16 hours for an ambulance, they were completely in support of what we are doing. People understand that we are fighting for the health service as a whole and want to be able to give a proper service to the public.’
