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…
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:
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”
