Ambulance workers go on strike today – with NHS offering advice on how patients will be affected
About 25,000 ambulance workers across England and Wales will strike today in a dispute with the government over pay, amid fears some patients will be forced to make their own way to hospital.
Staggered walkouts will take place over a 24-hour period and will include paramedics, call handlers, drivers and technicians from the Unison and GMB unions.
Workers will not strike for longer than 12 hours each, with call handlers expected to walk out for six-hour periods.
Staff working at the LAS emergency operations centre in Newham, east London, ahead of Wednesday’s strikes
Patients can expect waits for 999 and 111 calls to be answered as well as delays for ambulances, with health leaders warning of additional stress on an NHS that’s already under pressure.
Unison has balloted some 15,000 of its members who are set to walk out in London, Yorkshire, the North West, North East and South West.
Meanwhile, more than 10,000 GMB ambulance workers are also expected to strike, meaning ambulance services will be affected in the South West, South East coast, North West, South Central area, North East, East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire and Wales.
NHS England has advised patients to continue to call 999 for life-threatening emergencies but to use 111, GPs and pharmacies for non-urgent needs.
It said some people may be asked to make their own way to hospital, but urged people to seek medical advice from 111 or 999 before doing so.
If you are an NHS worker and would like to share your experiences with us anonymously, please email NHSstories@sky.uk
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Health workers daily ‘firefight’
‘Unwelcome return to unnecessary disruption’
Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Today’s ambulance strike is an unwelcome return to unnecessary disruption and comes at a time when the NHS is already under huge pressure from COVID and flu.
“While we have contingency plans in place, including support from the military, community first responders and extra call handlers, to mitigate risks to patient safety, there will inevitably be some disruption for patients with fewer ambulances on the road.”
Ambulance responses are split into categories, with category one being the most life-threatening such as cardiac arrests, while category two covers conditions such as strokes and sepsis.
Unions and trusts will decide which category two calls will receive a response during the strike.
The West Midlands Ambulance Service said it had agreed on a response to all category one calls plus other life-threatening cases such as heart attacks, strokes, difficulty in breathing and maternity cases.
Ben Holdaway, director of operations at the East Midlands Ambulance Service, said teams have worked to maximise the number of staff, though he anticipated a “much slower” response than usual.
“Where possible, our 999 control rooms will carefully assess and prioritise an ambulance response for those who need it most, and this may only be where there is a threat to life,” he added.
South Central Ambulance Service said the strike will involve 200 workers and will mostly disrupt its non-emergency patient transport services.
Meanwhile, Yorkshire Ambulance Service warned all its services will be impacted – including frontline emergency ambulances and 999 call handling, non-emergency patient transport and NHS 111.
It said ambulances will still be able to respond during the strike, “but this will only be where there is an immediate risk to life”.
In London, there is an agreement in place that a maximum of 50% of the staff will be taking industrial action at any one time and staff will come off picket lines if call-answering times are too long, according to Daniel Elkeles, the service’s chief executive officer.
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Who is striking and when?
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Why is the NHS struggling so much?
‘Life and limb conditions’
On whether category two calls will be answered, he said: “They will. We have called it life and limb conditions because some of them are in category one, some of them are in category two, and actually, some might be in category three.”
Miriam Deakin, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said trust leaders feared the NHS will be hit harder by Wednesday’s strike as more staff strike than they did in December, but said they will “pull out all the stops” to minimise the impact.
Monday’s talks between unions and the government failed to stop the planned strike, with industrial action also in the pipeline by teachers and rail staff.
Nurses are planning to strike next Wednesday and Thursday, while another ambulance strike is set to take place on 23 January.
Ambulance workers on the picket line outside Soundwell Ambulance Station, Bristol, in December
On Tuesday, the government brought in new legislation for “minimum safety levels” when workers stage walkouts.
But Business Secretary Grant Shapps told the Commons that Wednesday’s ambulance strike “still does not have minimum safety levels in place and this will result in patchy emergency care for the British people”.
Ambulance workers in England and Wales are striking over demands for a pay rise above inflation, but the government says most ambulance staff have received a pay rise of at least 4%.
Health Secretary Steven Barclay will be interviewed on Sky News at 7.20am.
The US has agreed to spare the UK from threatened trade tariffs on pharmaceutical products.
The announcement was made following months of uncertainty over whether exports from the UK, and elsewhere across Europe, would be subject to steep charges.
Via the policy update, the UK has become the only country in the world to secure a zero per cent tariff on pharmaceuticals exported to the US. Tariffs are taxes imposed on imports into a country.
In return, the UK has agreed to increase the baseline threshold used to assess if medicines can be used by the NHS.
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The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will increase the base threshold by 25%: from £20,000-£30,000 to £25,000-£35,000.
It means NICE will be able to approve medicines that deliver significant health improvements but might have been declined purely on cost-effectiveness grounds, the government said.
This could include breakthrough cancer treatments, therapies for rare diseases, and innovative approaches to conditions that have long been difficult to treat, it added.
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Many items require rare earth materials for manufacture and China has an abundance.
This will give NICE the opportunity to approve more new medicines and allow a greater number of patients to benefit from them, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) said.
It pointed out that NICE’s baseline cost-effectiveness threshold has not been increased for over 20 years.
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A US government statement said the UK will “reverse the decade-long trend of declining National Health Service (NHS) expenditures on innovative, life-saving medicines, and increase the net price it pays for new medicines by 25%”.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer said the US “will work to ensure that UK citizens have access to latest pharmaceutical breakthroughs”.
The background
US President Donald Trump has long complained that Europe does not pay enough for US drugs.
America and the UK agreed in May to seek a deal on the proviso that firms secured a better operating environment in Britain.
Criticism includes the concern that firms lose out on revenue due to a pricing regime which prioritises low costs for the NHS over incentives to invest.
In October, the science minister Patrick Vallance told MPs, as talks with the US continued, that many drugs available in the UK would see an “inevitable” price increase.
The family of a father-of-four who died on holiday in Benidorm say new evidence has further convinced them that foul play was involved in his death.
Nathan Osman, 30, from Pontypridd in South Wales, was on a long weekend break with friends in Benidorm in September 2024.
Less than 24 hours after he arrived, his body was found by an off-duty police officer at the bottom of a remote 650ft (200m) cliff on the outskirts of the resort.
He died from head and abdominal injuries after falling from height, a post-mortem found.
Local police said it was “a tragic accident” that occurred after Nathan left his friends in Benidorm to walk back to his hotel room alone.
But his family believe the investigation into his death has not been adequate, and that the local authorities have never considered the possibility of a homicide.
Their suspicions of foul play were first provoked by the fact that the remote location where Nathan was found was in the opposite direction to the hotel, and some distance away on foot.
They began doing their own investigating, building a timeline of events drawn from sources including CCTV, witness statements and Nathan’s bank records, which they say showed attempts were made to use his bank cards the day after he died.
After presenting their findings to Spanish prosecutors as evidence that others may have been involved, the case was reopened earlier this year.
Now, the family have told Sarah-Jane Mee on The UK Tonight that new phone data they have uncovered suggests he couldn’t have reached the spot he was found on foot.
Nathan’s brother Lee, mother Elizabeth and father Jonathan speak to Sarah-Jane Mee
After getting the phone back a couple of months ago, they say they tracked Nathan’s last movements through a health app.
“There’s a breakdown inside the app of every 10 minutes – the distance, pace, measurement of pace… every detail you can think of,” Nathan’s brother, Lee Evans, tells Mee.
“His pace wasn’t consistent with a fast walk or even a sprint.”
He said it was a faster journey, despite being uphill for 40 minutes, which has convinced the family that he was in a vehicle.
Pic: Family handout
The family also went to visit the area where Nathan was found.
“We were a bit upset, but we were very pleased we went up there”, his mother, Elizabeth, says. “We could see… there’s no way he would have looked at that area and thought, ‘I’m going up here.’
“You can see straight off, there’s no clubs, there’s no hotels up there, there’s just the odd house dotted around. It was just out in the wild, there was nothing up there.”
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The family says the phone data has helped them determine that he died around half an hour after he was seen on CCTV walking towards his hotel in the early hours of the morning.
“It was really ridiculous to think that my son would’ve walked up there [the remote location where he died] at 4am in the pitch dark.”
After the family were interviewed by Mee in May, South Wales Police opened its own investigation into Nathan’s death.
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Nathan’s family speaking to Mee in May
Lee says the Welsh force has been “appalled” by the lack of evidence turned over from the local police’s investigation.
His and Nathan’s father, Jonathan, says: “No procedures were followed. Nothing was cordoned off, it wasn’t a crime scene. There’s loads of things that could’ve been taken. Tyre tracks, foot tracks, nothing. No DNA taken.”
Lee says: “All that we’ve done over the last year, this could’ve been squashed within the first week, two weeks [by local investigators].
“We’ve had to find out and keep delving into every possible outcome and overturn every stone possible. We started off with… a needle in a haystack, we had no direction or any support on which way to go.”
Nathan Osman. Pic: Family handout
What does Nathan’s family hope for now?
Nathan’s family say they have located 27 CCTV cameras which could have picked Nathan up in the area, after local investigators didn’t find any.
Elizabeth says that after alerting Spanish police to the locations, they were told that the CCTV “wouldn’t be working” or that footage would’ve already been erased.
“They just surmised everything,” she adds.
But the family, who found the last known CCTV footage of Nathan earlier this year, are convinced there is still hope.
Lee says: “There’s a number of CCTV footage in that area. We know there’s a way of finding a vehicle of some sort.”
But the family admit they may never find whoever could be responsible for Nathan’s death because so much time has been lost.
Elizabeth concludes: “Nathan walks with us every day. We all believe that,” adding that “all we want” is to find the ones responsible for his death and for him to “have the respect of a decent investigation”.
Sky News contacted Spanish police, which declined to comment, adding the case is under judicial review and it doesn’t want to hinder the course of the investigation.
South Wales Police told Sky News: “South Wales Police is carrying out enquiries on behalf of HM Coroner and a family liaison officer has been appointed to provide support.”
Watch the full interview with Sarah-Jane Mee on The UK Tonight from 8pm this evening on Sky News.
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