Taxpayers have forked out at least £4.95 million in golden goodbyes for senior civil servants in the NHS. According to health minister Karin Smyth, in the year 2024-25 there were 33 exit payment cases disclosed by integrated care boards which were of a value of £150,001 or more. Eye-watering…
For context, there are currently 42 NHS Integrated Care Boards responsible for carving up NHS budgets and commissioning services for local areas. Meanwhile, as of November last year, NHS England has not opened a voluntary redundancy scheme and staffing costs have actually gone up since Starmer promised to ‘abolish’ the quango last March. The Hippocratic Oath doesn’t apply to quangos you’ve promised to abolish, by the way…
NHS quangos managed to hold 117 diversity events between May 2024 and December 2025, according TaxPayers’ Alliance research. Naturally all during working hours…
NHS Blood and Transplant, NHS Education for Scotland, NHS Professionals and the NHS Resolution racked up nearly 117 hours on DEI events. Or two working weeks…
Among the events:
- Queer Art Therapy
- Black History Month: Standing Firm in Power and Pride
- LGBT+ History Month: Quiz
- LGBT+ Allies Session- International Transgender Day of Visibility
- EDI & Culture Survey playback and Values Star of the Month
And that’s just for the quangos…
Wes Streeting has warned the combination of surging super flu cases and the junior doctors’ strikes next week means the NHS faces its worst week since the first days of the pandemic. ‘One minute to midnight…’
Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning, Streeting blasted the BMA for holding the NHS to ransom and putting staff at risk:
“The thing that I am genuinely fearful of is even if I throw more money at this situation now at this time to get us through the next week of strikes, there’s only a finite number of doctors and staff. There’s only a finite number of care home beds and community-based care… So if you’ve got strikes and you’ve got flu, and you’ve got all these challenges on corridors, and you’ve got demand going up rather than down, I just don’t think there’s a lever I can pull, I don’t think there’s an amount of money I can throw that means I can sit on your programme and guarantee patient safety over the next week…
I don’t understand why the BMA have not been willing to compromise.”
We are a long way from ‘getting around the table’ and ending the threat of strikes just by electing a Labour government…
NHS Trusts splashed £58,274 of taxpayer cash on 189 Pride events between June and August this year, according to analysis by the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Meanwhile junior doctors are walking out in the lead up to Christmas…
Some of the more intriguing events held across 88 hospitals include:
- Staff Pride picnics (nine of them)
- Zumbathon Pride Party
- Pride quiz
- LGBTQIA+ artist workshop
- Pride Flag Raising Ceremony
- A Drag Artiste
- The hidden queer history of Fitzrovia guided walk
Callum McGoldrick of the TPA said: “The NHS should be focusing on treating patients and clearing backlogs, not funding endless woke events”. Taxpayers will be running out of patients with this…
A majority of young women in the UK believe that the quality of NHS care has worsened, according to a poll from the Adam Smith Institute. They do use it more than men…
Polling conducted as part of the ASI’s ‘Anxious Generation’ series shows 46% of 18-30-year-olds in the UK say quality of care has worsened compared to 34% who say it has improved. Women are more pessimistic: 55% of them say the NHS has got worse compared to 43% of men. Only 26% of women think services have improved…
The ASI’s Data Manager Emma Schubart blamed “years of underfunding, staffing shortages, and the lingering effects of the pandemic.” The Tories’ new Shadow Health Secretary Stuart Andrew also adds: “Labour have scrapped targets to improve access to women’s health services, failed to get a grip on union overreach, and hit mental health charities with higher taxes, leaving women to pay the price of this Government.” As Guido revealed under the new government NHS staff time spent on union duties has shot up. The sacred cow may not be so for much longer…
As junior doctors finish their five-day strike today, nurses reject the government’s “grotesque” 3.6% pay rise, Guido can reveal hundreds of health service staff are working for their trade unions instead of doing their actual jobs. Under arcane rules from the Employment Protection Act of 1975…
According to research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance seen by Guido, in the year 2023/24, 168 NHS Trusts had more than 49 taxpayer-funded union representatives each using ‘facility time’ – paid time off granted to trade union reps in the NHS to carry out their union duties. The total cost of facility time came to £17.1 million. There will be other trusts with fewer than 49 paid reps taking time off to do union work – these don’t even have to be recorded according to the current rules…
A staggering 212 NHS workers spent 100% of their ‘working hours’ doing union work. Another 128 union reps spent between 51-99% of their time on union duties, and a further 2,586 worked on their union duties for at least 1%-50% of their hours. All on the public purse…
Lucy Powell on LBC, asked by Tom Swarbrick for her reaction to Labour MP Samantha Niblett’s call for a ‘summer of sex’ debate in Parliament: “I personally don’t own any sex toys, but each to their own… I’m not really sure that’s the right place for it, no.”
