NHS and health

The UK’s fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has found that IVF outcomes have varied widely for Black, Asian and minority ethnic background patients compared to white patients. The report, issued December 2023, gives data up to 2021. The average IVF birth rate per embryo transferred has increased across all ethnic groups. However, Black and Asian patients aged 18-37 had lower birth rates at 23% and 24% respectively in 2020-1. White patients had 32%. Single Black and Asian patients are also accessing fertility treatment far later than their white...

The backdrop to the health sector conference, 8-10 April, of the public services union Unison, was an NHS increasingly in crisis. Staff shortages, unsafe staff levels, low pay, privatisation and the impact on people who work in health, dominated all of the debates. Conference celebrated and applauded all of those who had struck over this year. But a plan of detailed action over this year’s pay was missing. A pay consultation email was sent out to all health members in England the week before conference but union branches didn’t know it was happening, and so it wasn’t accompanied by any local...

Six hundred NHS Clinical Support Workers (CSWs) on the Wirral have won their long-running dispute for rebanding and back pay. The workers, who are Unison members employed at Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge hospitals, have been striking since August 2023. Their demands were to be rebanded from band 2 to band 3 on the Agenda for Change NHS pay scale, as they were routinely undertaking clinical tasks such as taking and monitoring blood, performing electrocardiogram tests and inserting cannulas; and for that improved rate to be backdated to 2018. Seven health trusts in the North West moved workers...

Following a new offer on pay and reforms to the doctors’ pay review body, consultants (senior doctors) have voted to settle their current dispute. Meanwhile junior doctors have voted to renew their mandate under the anti-trade-union laws for strikes and, now, for other forms of industrial action — with over 97% voting yes to both, on a 62% turnout. The (quite complicated) terms of the consultants’ deal are summarised on the British Medical Association (BMA) website . Their struggle has extracted important concessions from the government, with significant real-terms pay rises for most, though...

Junior doctors in the British Medical Association (BMA) struck again 24-28 February. As noted repeatedly in Solidarity , their campaign for “pay restoration” — a real-terms pay rise and a plan to restore pay to the real-terms level of 2008 — has shown energy and determination, at least by the standard of other unions involved in last year’s disputes. These five days will take their running total in this campaign to 39. The rest of the labour movement should be doing much more to support junior doctors’ fight, on the picket lines, through broader solidarity and through pressure on the Labour...

Junior doctors in England will strike again for five days from 24 to 28 February, the tenth round of strikes in their fight for “pay restoration” — a real-terms pay rise and clear timetable to restore the real value of their pay to its 2008 level. As Solidarity went to press, junior doctors in Wales were due to strike 21-24 February. Junior doctors in Northern Ireland will strike, for the first time in this dispute, 6-7 March. The British Medical Association (BMA) is reballoting its junior doctor members in England to extend its legal strike mandate under the anti-trade union laws for another...

British Medical Association junior doctors in England fighting for “pay restoration” — a real-terms wage rise this year, and a clear plan to restore their pay to the real-terms level of 2008 — will strike again for five days this month, from the morning of Saturday 24 February to Wednesday 28 February. Other trade unionists, activists, and everyone who supports workers’ rights and the NHS should join their picket lines and demonstrations, and push for active solidarity from our unions and organisations. When their current legal mandate for strikes under the anti-trade-union laws expires at the...

A National Health Service dentist opening recently in Bristol had a queue down the street from early on its first day, and police warning many in the queue that they had no hope of getting in to sign on before the dentist shut. NHS waiting lists are still at a catastrophic level. More and more people who can scrape together a few thousand pounds are going to private hospitals for treatments like hip replacements because they would have to wait so long for the NHS. A new report from the Academy of Medical Sciences finds that long-term trends are now being reversed so that the health of children...

In August 2023 over 400 health staff at Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (WUTH) began strikes in a dispute over pay. They have now had 50 days of strikes. Clinical support workers (CSWs) assist nursing staff on the wards. They’re employed across the trust’s sites at Arrowe Park and Clatterbridge hospitals on the Wirral. CSWs on the band 2 pay scale had routinely been undertaking clinical tasks like taking and monitoring blood, electrocardiogram (ECG) tests, and inserting cannulas. They should be on at least a band 3 salary, which is nearly £2,000 a year more than they...

An estimated 150,000 workers took part in 24 hours strike in the North of Ireland on 18 January, including nurses, teachers, bus drivers, carers, cleaners and civil servants from 16 unions. Their core demand was aimed at the British government: to release the £0.6m for public sector pay uplifts which it is holding back as a gambit to pressure the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to end its boycott of Stormont. The party collapsed the Northern Ireland power-sharing regime in February 2022 in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol. Around 10,000 joined a rally in Belfast, with...