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…
The parents of Alice Figueiredo, the woman who took her own life in 2015 aged 22, have delivered a heartbreaking statement after the the NHS Trust which was looking after her (North East London Foundation NHS Trust) and a ward manager were found guilty of health and safety failings. Alice’s stepfather said:
“We have seen numerous inquests into deaths at trusts like now over decades after which the NHS trusts promise but failed to deliver safe patient care, the errors often the same ones repeated over and over again needless debts continue relentlessly to this day the claims of lessons learned are just well, worn empty rhetoric meaningless and hollow with government health care commissioners and regulators just failing to hold these trusts to account. Mr streeting if you’re listening today you need to hold these trust managers to account.”
Streeting will be trying to force the NHS to pay close attention to this tragic case…
Wes Streeting and Labour ministers have been pleading with junior doctors in the BMA to not strike over pay this summer. Meanwhile Unite is raging at the “insultingly low” 3.6% pay offer its NHS staff have got from the government and today said it will ballot them for strike action. Back for more…
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:
“The Government’s answer is a substandard award that is below inflation and is an insult to NHS staff. This offer does nothing to address low pay in the NHS, which hovers perilously close to the legal minimum. How can this possibly be fair or begin to improve staffing in the NHS?”
NHS workers in England will vote on 16 June, while NHS workers in Wales will vote on 9 June. Summer of discontent inbound…
Last month the BBC offered its staff ‘inclusive environment’ sessions after the Supreme Court trans ruling. Now the NHS is at it…
Guido has seen a memo from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, which runs four major hospitals and has the third-largest income of any NHS trust in England, announcing a series of “extraordinary sessions” for their 24,600 staff members on how to deal with the ruling and subsequent EHRC guidance. The memo laments:
“It was not the role of the UKSC to define what is, or what it means to be a ‘woman’… We understand that competing rights exist, and it is important that these are balanced. UHB is committed to fostering a safe and inclusive environment where everyone can thrive and bring their whole selves to work. We recognise all protected characteristics, and it is essential that we acknowledge and celebrate our differences. That is our ethical and moral obligation to each other. We acknowledge that this has been a difficult time for many colleagues and would like to take the opportunity to remind you of the support available to you.”
The ‘UHBeProud Staff Network’ and Inclusion Team go on to list eight one-hour long support sessions over the next two months available for staff to join. Naturally all between the hours of 1100 and 1700…
The memo is signed off by the Trust’s CEO Jonathan Brotherton – who took home a whopping £427,000 in remuneration last year. Unbelievably, just last week, the Trust announced it was planning to cut around 300 roles in cost-saving measures. The Trust’s 2.2 million annual patients might have a view on what staff should spend their working hours doing…
Read the memo in full below:
A US government review ordered by President Trump has torched the NHS’s proposed trial of puberty blockers for children – branding it “not ethical” and warning of “significant harms.” The report published by the Department of Health and Human Services later today, echoes the findings of the Cass Review but goes further in its warnings. The researchers say that the high risk of infertility from puberty blockers in particular should prevent their current use in trials…
Cass recommended a trial of puberty blockers to establish both benefits and harms – a process the NHS is now designing. Though the US report concludes that the trial would “conflict with well-established ethical standards for human subjects research.” Oof…
Although the authors of the review remain anonymous – out of fear of threats from gender ideologues – one source close to the process is openly critical of Trump, saying: “We have a choice between bad and worse – bad is letting the Trump administration address this, worse is allowing this field of medicine to go completely unregulated and see kids sterilised and have breasts amputated with zero accountability.” The report concludes:
“We can be certain in the ordinary sense of ‘certain’ that these interventions cause harm, even if we do not have ‘high certainty’ evidence in the technical sense.”
The NHS facing heat from across the pond…
Read the report in full below:
Continue reading “Trump-Ordered US Review Concludes NHS Puberty Blocker Trial Is Unethical”
You’d think that given the generally collapsing state of primary care in the NHS that newly-qualified doctors would be snapped up. And treated like a rare commodity…
A weird set of reforms, seen through in the dying days of the Tory government, is however now coming into practice. New doctors are being made to wait for weeks to hear where in the country they will be posted after a randomised system was introduced – for progressive purposes. The BBC reports:
“Previously, students were ranked and jobs were allocated based on merit, but this was changed for fear it was stressful for students and particularly unfair on those from deprived backgrounds and ethnic minorities. They tended to perform less well, and therefore were more likely to be posted to regions they did not favour, according to the UK Foundation Programme.”
Now new doctors are spending weeks trying to find housing and set up lives in random cities, with many forced into temporary accommodation. There are fears the new lottery system will incentivise UK trained doctors to move abroad or quit: the BMA says nearly a third of current medical students say they intend on working abroad, “and close to half of those say they do not plan to return.” Genius…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”