Anti-strike bill: Ambulance unions ‘put people’s lives at risk’ by refusing minimum levels of service, Business Secretary Grant Shapps says
Ambulance unions placed people’s lives at risk when they refused to introduce countrywide minimum levels of service during strikes last month, the business secretary has said.
Grant Shapps hit out at ambulance workers for only agreeing on a local level to minimum service levels after he earlier told Sky News it was a “regional or postcode lottery”.
The business secretary introduced a bill to parliament on Monday afternoon that will mean unions representing key workers will have to agree to minimum levels of safety and service when their members go on strike.
Mr Shapps praised nurses for ensuring safe levels of cover were in place on a national level during pre-Christmas strikes.
He earlier told Sky News the bill would protect people’s lives while respecting workers’ rights to stage walkouts.
The bill, if it gets made into law, will mean some trade union members would be required to continue working during a strike.
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Mr Shapps told MPs: “A lack of timely co-operation from the ambulance unions meant employers could not reach agreement nationally for minimum safety levels during recent strikes and health officials were left guessing at the likely minimum coverage, making contingency planning almost impossible and putting everyone’s constituents lives at risk.
“The ambulance strike plans for tomorrow still do not have minimum safety levels in place and this will result in patchy emergency care for the British people.
“And this cannot continue.”
Nurses were praised for ensuring minimum levels of service during December strikes
The GMB union, whose ambulance worker members are going on strike on Wednesday, said it was an “extraordinary attack”.
“He surely knows that across NHS trusts, GMB members who care for the public every single day, work closely with employers to provide appropriate cover on strike days and have left picket lines to help out on urgent calls,” a spokesman said.
“The public know who is to blame for the crisis in our NHS – this government. And, people will be disgusted that in a matter of months, they have gone from clapping health workers to legislating to sack them.”
Labour has said it would repeal the bill, with Deputy Leader Angela Rayner telling the Commons the proposal will lead to nurses being sacked and is an “outright attack on the fundamental freedom of British people”.
She accused the government of “playing politics with nurses’ and teachers’ lives because they can’t stomach the cooperation and negotiation that’s needed”.
Unions have said the bill is “an attack on the right to strike”.
Mr Shapps told Sky News’ Kay Burley at Breakfast: “It works in places like France and Italy and Spain, Germany.
“Other places have minimum service or in some cases with the NHS safety type levels, which mean that if you call an ambulance, for example, you know that it will turn up if it’s a heart attack or stroke.”
Conservative MP Stephen McPartland said it was “shameful, shameful, shameful to target individual workers and order them to walk past their mates on picket line or be sacked”.
Read more:
NHS strikes to go ahead after talks break down
Who is striking and when?
Business Secretary Grant Shapps said there can be minimum service levels while respecting people’s right to strike
Minimum services law extension
The Conservative party’s 2019 election manifesto already promised a minimum service law for public transport, with a bill introduced to parliament in October.
Now, the government wants to extend that requirement to five other areas – the NHS, education, fire and rescue, border security and nuclear decommissioning.
Under the law, employers could issue a “work notice” laying out the workforce they need so employees on the list would lose their right to protection from unfair dismissal if they went on strike.
Consultations over what exactly the minimum levels would be are set to begin soon and further details are due to be published next week when MPs will get a chance to debate the bill during its second reading in parliament.
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Unite: Strikes will go on
Proposals ‘unworkable’
The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents all unions, said the bill is the “latest attack on the right to strike” and said it would make it harder for disputes to be resolved.
Paul Nowak, TUC general secretary, said: “That’s undemocratic, unworkable, and almost certainly illegal.”
Mr Shapps’ bill is being introduced the day before ambulance workers – who are members of the GMB and Unison unions – go on strike after talks with Health Secretary Steve Barclay broke down on Monday.
Ambulance workers from Unison and Unite are set to strike again on 23 January, while nurses with the Royal College of Nursing union have said they will strike on 18 and 19 January.
Specialist search teams, police dogs and divers have been dispatched to find two sisters who vanished in Aberdeen three days ago.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32, were last seen on CCTV in the city’s Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 2.12am on Tuesday.
The siblings were captured crossing the bridge and turning right onto a footpath next to the River Dee in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.
Henrietta Huszti. Pic: Police Scotland
Eliza Huszti. Pic: Police Scotland
Police Scotland has launched a major search and said it is carrying out “extensive inquires” in an effort to find the women.
Chief Inspector Darren Bruce said: “Local officers, led by specialist search advisors, are being assisted by resources including police dogs and our marine unit.”
Aberdeenshire Drone Services told Sky News it has offered to help in the search and is waiting to hear back from Police Scotland.
CCTV of the sisters. Pic: Police Scotland
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The sisters, from Aberdeen city centre, are described as slim with long brown hair.
Police said the Torry side of Victoria Bridge where the sisters were last seen contains many commercial and industrial units, with searches taking place in the vicinity.
The force urged businesses in and around the South Esplanade and Menzies Road area to review CCTV footage recorded in the early hours of Tuesday in case it captured anything of significance.
Drivers with relevant dashcam footage are also urged to come forward.
CI Bruce added: “We are continuing to speak to people who know Eliza and Henrietta and we urge anyone who has seen them or who has any information regarding their whereabouts to please contact 101.”
Glasgow has been a city crying out for solutions to a devastating drugs epidemic that is ravaging people hooked on deadly narcotics.
We have spent time with vulnerable addicts in recent months and witnessed first-hand the dirty, dangerous street corners and back alleys where they would inject their £10 heroin hit, not knowing – or, in many cases, not caring – whether that would be the moment they die.
“Dying would be better than this life,” one man told me.
It was a grim insight into the daily reality of life in the capital of Europe’s drug death crisis.
Scotland has a stubborn addiction to substances spanning generations. Politicians of all persuasions have failed to properly get a grip of the emergency.
But there is a new concept in town.
From Monday, a taxpayer-funded unit is allowing addicts to bring their own heroin and cocaine and inject it while NHS medical teams supervise.
A dirty needle thrown less than 100 metres from the new injection centre
It may be a UK-first but it is a regular feature in some other major European cities that have claimed high success rates in saving lives.
Glasgow has looked on with envy at these other models.
One supermarket car park less than a hundred metres from this new facility is a perfect illustration of the problem. An area littered with dirty needles and paraphernalia. A minefield where one wrong step risks contracting a nasty disease.
Drugs paraphernalia in a supermarket car park in Glasgow, near the new facility
It is estimated hundreds of users inject heroin in public places in Glasgow every week. HIV has been rife.
The new building, which will be open from 9am until 9pm 365 days a year, includes bays where clean needles are provided as part of a persuasive tactic to lure addicts indoors in a controlled environment.
There is a welcome area where people will check in before being invited into one of eight bays. The room is clinical, covered in mirrors, with a row of small medical bins.
Clean needles are provided to lure addicts to inject in a controlled environment
There are eight bays users can inject in
We were shown the aftercare area where users will relax after their hit in the company of housing and social workers.
The idea is controversial and not cheap – £2.3m has been ring-fenced every year.
The aftercare area
Read more: ‘Dying would be better than my £1,000 a month heroin addiction’
Authorities in the city first floated a ‘safer drug consumption room’ in 2016. It failed to get off the ground as the UK Home Office under the Conservatives said they would not allow people to break the law to feed habits.
The usual wrangle between Edinburgh and London continued for years with Downing Street suggesting Scotland could, if it wanted, use its discretion to allow these injecting rooms to go ahead.
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The stalemate ended when Scotland’s most senior prosecutor issued a landmark decision that it would not be in the public interest to arrest those using such a facility.
One expert has told me this new concept is unlikely to lead to an overall reduction in deaths across Scotland. Another described it as an expensive vanity project. Supporters clearly disagree.
The question is what does success look like?
The big test will be if there is a spike in crime around the building and how it will work alongside law enforcement given drug dealers know exactly where to find their clients now.
It is not disputed this is a radical approach – and other cities across Britain will be watching closely.
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