‘THE damage that you’re doing to families like mine is terrible,’ the mother of a sick three-year-old girl told Tory Health Secretary Stephen Barclay when he attempted a political stunt against striking NHS workers at King’s College Hospital in south London yesterday.
On the eve of today’s second ever NHS national nurses strike Barclay invited the TV cameras to join him at the bedside of three-year-old Lucy Pinnington-Auld, who is suffering from cystic fibrosis.
Speaking to Barclay at her daughter’s bedside, Sarah Pinnington-Auld accused him of doing ‘terrible damage’ to the NHS.
‘The damage you’re doing to families like myself is terrible,’ she told him. ‘We’re so lucky as a nation to have our NHS – I feel like you’re criticising it all the time.’
She said: ‘We are moving to a privatised system, like America, where the disparity in the health service between rich and poor is vast.’
She told Barclay that her daughter was pushed off the ‘absolutely horrific waiting list’ despite having a life-shortening condition, because of the obscene numbers of people waiting for treatment.
‘Her care here has been absolutely amazing. The doctors and nurses – everyone has been brilliant, considering what they are under, considering the shortages of staff, considering the lack of resources.
‘We have some brilliant experts and they are being worked to the bone … the level of care they provide is amazing – but they’re not being able to provide it in the way they want because the resourcing is not there.
‘The damage that you’re doing to families like mine is terrible, because it was agony for us as a family waiting for that call, preparing our children, for their sister and her hospital visit, for it then to be cancelled.
‘And I know you look and we’re all numbers, but actually they’re people waiting for care.’
Barclay had spent the weekend denouncing the nurses’ pay claim and insisting that he would not talk to their unions, the RCN and Unison, about pay.
Ahead of today’s national strike action, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) vowed yesterday that it will stage a fresh wave of more severe strikes in January if ministers are not prepared to open talks within the next 48 hours.
Patricia Marquis, England director for the RCN, said that the union does not want protracted strikes – but she warned that its mandate for industrial action covers the next six months and action will be called.
Unite leader Sharon Graham said Barclay will get a ‘rude awakening’ if he refuses to negotiate with health unions on pay and insisted that the unions will not ‘blink first’ to break the deadlock.
Ambulance worker members of Unite, Unison and the GMB are striking tomorrow, with the Tories mobilising members of the armed forces to break their strike.
Unison general secretary Christine McAnea said the decision to go ahead with this week’s ambulance strike had not been taken lightly.
She said the government has ‘adamantly refused’ to engage in a ‘proper discussion’ on pay.