NHS strikes: Hospital boss says preparing for winter amid walkouts ‘like going into battle with one hand behind your back’
The chief executive of a busy NHS Hospital Trust has described preparing for winter amid ongoing industrial action by consultants and junior doctors as “going into a really tough battle with one hand tied behind your back”.
Matthew Trainer, CEO of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, was speaking exclusively to Sky News on the first day of an unprecedented joint action by consultants and their junior doctor colleagues.
He said: “I think we’ve cancelled more than 10,000 outpatient appointments here. We’ve cancelled more than a thousand non-urgent surgeries and a small number of urgent surgeries.
“What we’re increasingly seeing is actually we’re not cancelling things, because we’re not even booking stuff in any more for the strike days.
“It feels like we’re walking into a really tough battle with one hand tied behind our back.”
Mr Trainer, who has 12 hospitals under his care including the Queen’s Hospital in Essex and the King George Hospital in Ilford, said his patients and his staff were suffering because of the industrial action by NHS health workers. which is now in its 10th month.
He said: “It’s about the patients who are not getting access to the care that they need. And the second thing, it’s about the staff that we’re asking, at times, to work in some really tough circumstances.
“I regularly meet our emergency department teams because they tend to bear the brunt of it. Emergency departments are the last unrationed part of health care, they’re the only place you can walk into and guarantee someone will see you. And as a result, we’re seeing real pressures piled on to them.”
Some 900,000 NHS appointments have been cancelled across England since December last year.
Matthew Trainer has 12 hospitals under his care
Hospitals now routinely do not book appointments for strike days, with the dates announced at least six weeks in advance. That means the true figure of disruption to elective care is likely to be much higher.
Mr Trainer added: “I think one thing that worries me is actually that we’re finding the strikes less difficult to cope with because we’re becoming so practised at them.
“The NHS is good at crisis management and responding to incidents. Actually, we now know how to stand up a strike rota. We know to take down all the planned care activity. This shouldn’t be something we’re used to doing.
“You know, this should remain a real outlier for us, to have cancelled 10,000 outpatient appointments since April is not normal. And we should not become accustomed to this as a way of doing business in healthcare.”
But this is likely to be the case for months to come, deep into another crippling winter.
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The junior doctors and consultants have long mandates for strike action and show no sign of calling them off.
Their union, the BMA, will feel vindicated in its action after learning that the public is more than twice as likely to blame the government for the ongoing strikes than the doctors’ trade unions, by 45% compared to 21%, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by Sky News.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made bringing down waiting lists one of his key pledges.
But that is not achievable unless there is a resolution to what is becoming an increasingly bitter and protracted dispute. It also means trusts are not able to prepare for the fast-approaching winter.
Mr Trainer continued: “We had a really tough winter, last year. January was as bad as I’ve ever seen it in terms of the pressures. Primary care is also seeing huge increases in demand.
“They’re seeing more people than ever before, but they can’t keep up with the demand, and mental health services are also dealing with enormous backlogs for care and emergency care.
“So we’re trying to get ourselves ready for that. But what we know at the minute is that unless there’s some kind of resolution to this, we’re going to have to deal with that regular disruption of strike action.
“And I think we’re getting to a position now where it’s making it very hard to plan for what’s going to be the toughest period of the year in the NHS.
“We’ve got clinical staff trying to deliver good quality health care in some really challenging environments at the minute. And this is just adding to the strain they’re feeling and adding to the pressures on the NHS.”
Three brothers have been jailed after underage girls in Leeds and Barrow-in-Furness were sexually abused and raped over a number of years.
The trio were convicted in October last year, with the abuse taking place between 1996 and 2010.
Shaha Amran Miah, 49, known as Jai; Shaha Alman Miah, 47, known as Ali; and Shah Joman Miah, 38, known as Sarj all pleaded not guilty.
Sarj has since admitted his crimes. However, the judge said it could be a cynical attempt for leniency and did not give him any credit.
Shaha Amran Miah, Shaha Joman Miah and Shaha Alman Miah. Pic: Cumbria Police
They were sentenced on Friday to the following:
Shaha Amran Miah – life with a minimum term of 20 years and 338 days.
Shaha Alman Miah – 10 years in prison and four years on licence.
Shah Joman Miah – life with a minimum term of 21 years and 232 days.
Preston Crown Court heard Sarj and Jai regularly sexually abused two children at a Leeds mosque over many years, beginning when the victims were seven.
The three also preyed on vulnerable and underage girls at a flat above their family’s takeaway in Barrow, Cumbria, between 2008 and 2010.
They gave them cigarettes, alcohol, food and even hair extensions in what barrister Tim Evans KC called a “classic grooming technique”.
He said the brothers worked as a team and “created an environment in Barrow in which each of them could abuse young girls”.
Judge Unsworth KC said they had shattered the lives of their victims and hid in plain sight in the Cumbria town.
Multiple schoolgirls in their uniforms were regularly seen at the takeaway, the judge said, with Jai acting ruthlessly to stop them going to the police.
The court heard Sarj would take one of the girls to a hotel for sex about twice a month and became increasingly controlling – to the point she remains on medication and is terrified of seeing him in the street.
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A witness told Sky News the men abused their victims in a dingy room above the takeaway that “looked like a crackhouse” and had mattresses on the floor and sheets covering the windows.
“They knew exactly how young they were,” she said. “They didn’t only have one girlfriend each… they had multiple.”
Shaha Amran Miah was found guilty of 16 sexual offences against three girls, including rape, as well as two charges of intimidation and one of kidnap.
Shaha Alman Miah was found guilty of three counts of sexual activity with a child.
Shah Joman Miah was convicted of sexually abusing three children. There were nine counts of rape of a child among his 40 offences.
Apple will no longer offer customers in the UK its most advanced, end-to-end security encryption feature for cloud data – following a security row with the government.
The Advanced Data Protection (ADP) tool is an optional feature which means only account holders can see things like photos or documents that they have stored online. Apple itself does not have access to the data.
However, the UK government reportedly requested the right to see the data earlier this month.
In response, Apple has removed the tool from use in the UK.
The company is switching it off as an option for those not already using it, and will introduce a process to move existing users away from it.
Security officials argue that encryption hinders criminal investigations, while tech firms defend it as essential to user privacy.
The loss of end-to-end encryption for iCloud backup means Apple would be able in some instances to read user data such as iMessages that would otherwise be protected and pass it on to authorities if legally compelled.
However, if a user has end-to-end encryption, Apple cannot read the data under any circumstances.
An Apple store in New York. Pic: iStock
What has Apple said?
“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,” Apple said in a statement.
“Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before.
“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom.”
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Apple customers who already had the data protection tool turned on “will eventually need to disable this security feature”, said the company.
It is already unavailable for customers who weren’t using the feature, who now see a message reading: “Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users.”
What has the UK government said?
The government said it will not confirm or deny whether it requested a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), which is what would give it the right to see the encrypted data.
“We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices,” a Home Office spokesperson told Sky News.
According to a Home Office source, however, even if a TCN was issued, it wouldn’t give the government blanket access to people’s data.
Separate authorisations or warrants would still be required.
What’s the reaction from the tech industry?
Many in the tech industry are shocked by Apple’s move, with Graeme Stewart from cybersecurity company Check Point saying it “is effectively smashing open Pandora’s box and hoping the chaos stays neatly inside”.
“At its heart, encryption isn’t just for criminals; it’s a shield for millions of law-abiding citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure,” he said.
“Now we are prying open that door to our digital Fort Knox, there’s no telling what else might slip through.”
Apple was also described as “calling the government’s bluff” by Robert Peake who is the technology partner at Keystone Law, for refusing to create a backdoor into its protected data.
“The Government will face increasing pressure to back down on this, as it seriously undermines its recent attempts to portray the UK as a pro-innovation place to operate,” he said.
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