ACCORDING to analysis from the Nuffield Trust 40,000 nurses have left the NHS in the past year, which is more than one in nine of the workforce.

The further 18 million in planned cuts to the NHS and public services will come out of the wages, terms and conditions of front-line staff and will further deepen the staffing crisis.

The accelerating crisis in nurse recruitment and retention has come to a head partly because of the pandemic but this is not the full story. This nurse exodus has been several decades in the making.

Destructive changes in training that promised more professionalism and higher pay for nurses but delivered the exact opposite has had an adverse impact on recruitment and retention.

Cuts and privatisation have demoralised staff, forced them out and run the NHS into the ground.

NHS management have had a free hand to operate on the basis of the lie that “there is no money.” NHS assets have been sold off as services have been cut and/or hived off to the private sector and this has had a devastating impact on staff and patients.

It is clear that the Truss government will continue and accelerate this trajectory.

Health and Social Care minister Therese Coffey is positioning herself as “patients’ champion” rather than a government minister who has power to make key decisions on NHS expenditure.

The idea that Coffey is a patients’ champion while she presides over further planned cuts to the NHS is simply ludicrous.  

The plan to put £500 million into the privatised care home sector will go straight down a financial black hole and will not support the NHS to safely discharge patients. Patient placements in social care are costly because the system is privatised, run for profit and not in the interests of patients.

The “army of volunteers” Coffey is calling for won’t solve the nurse recruitment crisis either. Flooding the NHS with untrained volunteers will inevitably make services even more unstable and unsafe.

It is important to acknowledge that the way the large health unions have traditionally operated has been part of the problem so a change in approach is now essential.

NHS trade unions are widely viewed as service providers defending individuals rather than catalysts supporting nurses and others to take collective action to oppose attacks on pay and conditions.

The workplaces that get unionised, organised and mount resistance will be the ones that escape the full force of the Tory Party axe.

The need for patients’ groups, NHS campaign groups and trade union members to unite and fight back together around the correct set of principles and demands has never been greater.

Start by insisting that no further cuts to the front line can be tolerated as the NHS is on its knees.

Market methods should be vigorously opposed by all politicians claiming to be on the side of a publicly provided NHS free at the point of use.

Serious NHS campaigners must give up all illusions that those who line themselves up alongside politicians who support cuts and privatisation are friends, comrades or allies.

They have picked their side, the side of Coffey, Streeting and co and we need to pick ours, the side of the staff who are leaving in droves and the side of the patients who are being neglected and denied NHS services.

There is no middle ground, no half-way house when it comes to defending what is left of the NHS. A united front and not a popular front is the only method that can successfully defeat attacks on the NHS.

The health unions must lead the way in the struggle and adopt a common and clear set of demands around the pay, terms and conditions for all NHS staff to reverse abuse and exploitation and halt the exodus of staff out of the NHS.

Demands to include the reinstatement of the student nurse bursary and an inflation linked pay rise for all NHS staff would go some way towards giving staff the confidence that their plight is being taken seriously by the unions.

Privatisation should be unequivocally opposed and organising workers around the demand to insource NHS staff on full AFC contracts should be universally adopted.

 Health Unions must begin to work and act together, putting members first and organise them to stand up to the profiteers who have taken over the top tiers of the NHS.

All unions are running strike ballots which is a step forward from the days when nurses widely believed they “were not allowed to strike.” However more work must be done by the unions to co-ordinate and collaborate rather than compete.

Reversing the tide of destruction of the NHS starts with focusing on what staff need in order to deliver services because there will be no NHS for any of us without them.