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Talks to avert the nursing strike on Thursday have failed after the union leader behind the action accused the health secretary of refusing to discuss pay.

Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said on Monday night: “I needed to come out of this meeting with something serious to show nurses why they should not strike this week. Regrettably, they are not getting an extra penny.”

Earlier, No 10 had indicated Steve Barclay, the health secretary, would not be willing to negotiate a new pay offer for nurses, but it was thought other aspects of the nurses’ employment could be up for discussion.

Rail strikes will go ahead this week – politics latest

However, the union had made it clear that pay would have to be on the table if the government wanted to avert the strike action on Thursday.

Ms Cullen told Sky News she went into the meeting with “hopes” but the government “was true to its word – they would not talk to me about pay”.

She said Mr Barclay “showed total belligerence this afternoon, he closed his books and walked away”.

“I did most of the talking, there was very little talking coming from the other side of the table, except to keep repeating to me that he has accepted the independent pay review body recommendation,” she said.

The union is demanding a pay rise of 5% above the RPI rate of inflation, which was 14.2% in October, but Ms Cullen has hinted that she could compromise if the government negotiates on pay.

Ministers have repeatedly insisted they can’t afford to give inflation-busting pay rises and say they have accepted the independent pay review body’s recommendation of a £1,400 rise.

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Nurses ‘left out in the cold’

Ms Cullen said nurses’ pay has dropped by 20% in the past decade, so what they are looking for is “pay restoration”.

“They are not asking for their pockets to be lined with gold, they never have and they never will,” she said.

She said nurses are living “beneath the breadline” and “can no longer afford to be in the profession”.

“We have been left out in the cold by our secretary of state,” she said.

During the meeting, Mr Barclay told Ms Cullen that pay increases for nurses would take money from frontline services, a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care said.

“Mr Barclay said he would continue to engage with the RCN as we move into the pay review process for next year and on non-pay related issues,” the spokesperson added.

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Public sector pay review is fair, says chancellor

Mr Barclay was under increasing pressure to settle a deal after strikes by ambulance staff and some NHS workers in Scotland were called off today, as members of two unions voted to accept the Scottish government’s recent pay offer.

Unite and Unison members cancelled the planned industrial action following negotiations with Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and the intervention of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The new deal means NHS workers in Scotland would remain the best-paid in the UK, with workers getting pay rises ranging from £2,205 to £2,751.

For the lowest paid it would be a rise of 11.3%, with an average rise of 7.5%.

However, nursing strikes will still go ahead in Wales after last-minute talks to resolve the dispute over pay also collapsed on Monday.

The first nurses’ strike will take place on 15 December and, should no resolution be found afterwards, a second strike day will take place on 20 December.

Ms Cullen said she expected further strikes to go ahead next year unless the government is willing to discuss pay.

Nurses are among hundreds of thousands of workers striking this winter across many sectors.

Earlier, the RMT union voted to reject an offer from Network Rail aimed at averting a series of rail strikes in the coming weeks.

Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, accused Mr Barclay of “spoiling for a fight”.

He said: “They want to blame nurses, blame paramedics, blame NHS staff for challenges in the National Health Service which are the direct fault and responsibility of 12 years of Conservative mismanagement – frankly, I think it’s disgusting.”

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Mum diagnosed with cancer tells of the day her life changed ahead of assisted dying vote

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Mum diagnosed with cancer tells of the day her life changed ahead of assisted dying vote

There is a lot at stake this week for Sophie Blake, a 52-year-old mother to a young adult, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer in May 2023.

As MPs vote on whether to change the law to allow assisted dying, Sophie tells Sky News of the day her life changed.

“One night I woke up and as I turned I felt a sensation of something in my breast actually move, and it was deep,” she says, speaking from her home in Brighton.

“Something fluidy, a very odd sensation. I woke up and made a doctor’s appointment.”

Sophie underwent an ultrasound followed by a biopsy before she was taken to a room in the clinic and offered water.

“They said, ‘a hundred percent, we believe you have breast cancer’.”

But it was the phone call with her mother that made it feel real.

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“My mum had been waiting at home. She phoned me and said ‘How is it darling?’ and I said ‘I’ve got breast cancer,’ and it was just that moment of having to say it out loud for the first time and that’s when that part of my life suddenly changed.”

Sophie says terminal cancers can leave patients dreading the thought of suffering at the end of their lives.

“What I don’t want to be is in pain,” she says. “If I am facing an earlier death than I wanted then I want to be able to take control at the end.”

Assisted dying, she believes, gives her control: “It’s an insurance policy to have that there.”

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On Friday, the government is set to debate the issue before voting on it. Sophie hopes they’ll back the proposal.

“It should be my choice to be able to have a compassionate death,” she says.

There has been much debate about the bill since details about how it would work were published earlier this month.

On Friday, former prime minister Gordon Brown became the latest senior political figure to share his opinion on the matter, coming out as against the legalisation of assisted dying, based on his experience of his own daughter’s death.

Disability rights advocate Lucy Webster warns that for people like Sophie to have that choice, others could face pressure to die.

Lucy Webster, disability rights advocate
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Lucy Webster

“All around the world, if you look at places where the bill has been introduced, they’ve been broadened and broadened and broadened,” she tells Sky News.

Lucy is referring to countries like Canada and Netherlands, where eligibility for assisted deaths have widened since laws allowing it were first passed.

Lucy, who is a wheelchair user and requires a lot of care, says society still sees disabled people as burdens which places them at particular risk.

“I don’t know a single disabled person who has not at some point had a stranger come up to us and say, ‘if I were you, I’d kill myself’,” she says.

The assisted dying bill, she says, reinforces the view that disabled lives aren’t worth living.

“I’ve definitely had doctors and healthcare professionals assume that my quality of life is inherently worse than other people’s. That’s a horrible assumption to be faced with when [for example] you’ve just gone to get antibiotics for a chest infection. There are some really deep-seated medical views on disability that are wrong.”

Under the plans, a person would need to be terminally ill and in the final six months of their life, and would have to take the fatal drugs themselves.

Among the safeguards are that two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and that a High Court judge must give their approval. But the bill does not make clear if that is a rubber-stamping exercise or if judges will have to investigate cases including risks of coercion.

Julian Hughes, honorary professor at Bristol Medical School, says there’s a very big question about whether courts have the room to take on such a task.

Julian Hughes, honorary professor at Bristol Medical School
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Julian Hughes

“At the moment in the family division I understand there are 19 judges and they supply 19,000 hours of court hearing in a year, but you’d have to have an extra 34,000,” he explains.

“We shouldn’t fool ourselves and think that there wouldn’t be some families who would be interested in getting the inheritance rather than spending the inheritance on care for their elderly family members. We could quickly become a society in which suicide becomes normalised.”

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Young people to lose benefits if they refuse work and training, says minister

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Young people to lose benefits if they refuse work and training, says minister

Young people will lose their benefits if they refuse to take up work and training opportunities, a minister has said ahead of announcing measures to cut the welfare bill.

Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that “conditions” will be attached to new skills opportunities the government intends to create.

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With a record number of young people currently unemployed, Labour promised in its manifesto a “youth guarantee” for 18-21 year olds to have access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work.

“If people repeatedly refuse to take up the training work responsibilities, there will be sanctions on their benefits,” Ms Kendall said.

“The reason why we believe this so strongly is that we believe in our responsibility to provide those new opportunities which is what we will do. We will transform those opportunities, but young people will be required to take them up.”

The Labour government has said it will stick to a commitment under the former Tory administration to reduce the welfare bill by £3bn over five years.

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The Public Accounts Committee's report says the DWP has relatively few programmes that directly target people from ethnic minority backgrounds

Ms Kendall said her party will bring in its “own reforms” to achieve that target, though did not elaborate further.

The Conservatives had planned to change work capability rules to tighten eligibility, so around 400,000 more people signed off sick long-term would be assessed as needing to prepare for work by 2028/29 to deliver the savings.

Asked whether these people would ultimately be denied their current benefits under Labour’s plans, Ms Kendall told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “I’m saying we will bring forward our own reforms. You wouldn’t expect me to announce this on your programme.

“But my objective is that disabled people should have the same chances and rights to work as everybody else.”

The latest official forecasts published by the government show the number of people claiming incapacity benefits is expected to climb from around 2.5 million in 2019 to 4.2 million in 2029.

Last year there were just over three million claimants.

Ms Kendall will launch proposals on Tuesday designed to “get Britain working” amid concerns about the soaring unemployment rate.

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The white paper is expected to include the placement of work coaches in mental health clinics and a “youth guarantee” aimed at ensuring those aged 18-21 are working or studying.

Ministers are also looking at a subsidised jobs scheme, Sky News revealed last week.

The UK remains the only G7 country that has higher levels of economic inactivity now than before the pandemic.

Ms Kendall said the reasons are “complex” and include the fact that the UK is an older and sicker nation.

Asked whether she believes “normal feelings” are being “over-medicalised”, she said that while some people may be “self-diagnosing” themselves with mental health issues it is a “genuine problem”.

“There’s not one simple thing. You know, the last government said people were too bluesy to work.

“I mean, I don’t know who they were speaking to. There is a genuine problem with mental health in this country.”

Ms Kendall’s language was softer than Sir Keir Starmer, who this weekend promised a crackdown on “criminals” who “game the system” .

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he said: “Make no mistake, we will get to grips with the bulging benefits bill blighting our society.”

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Man fighting for his life after stabbing on Westminster Bridge

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Man fighting for his life after stabbing on Westminster Bridge

A man is fighting for his life after a stabbing on Westminster Bridge, police have said.

Officers were called to the scene at around 10.45am on Sunday to reports of a fight and found a man with a stab injury. He was taken to hospital in critical condition.

Westminster Bridge is closed with investigations ongoing.
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Westminster Bridge is closed with investigations ongoing.

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and another has been arrested on suspicion of affray.

Two of those arrested were taken to hospital with minor facial injuries, the Met Police said.

It is understood the incident is not being treated as terror-related.

The road remains closed, with the police investigation ongoing.

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