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‘When the NHS goes private, we’ll be paying for ambulances’

Ambulance workers on the picket line tell the Star why winning their pay dispute is so important for the future of the health service

MORE than 25,000 ambulance workers walked out on strike today as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that it would be “lovely to wave a magic wand” and give them the pay rise they want and deserve.

His pathetic response to the mounting NHS crisis was in stark contrast to the determination and courage displayed by tens of thousands of health workers intent on winning pay justice and on defending the NHS from destruction at Tory hands.

On freezing picket lines across England and Wales, ambulance workers told their own stories of the life-saving jobs they do and the tragic, unnecessary deaths caused by the deliberate run-down of ambulance and health services in what is increasingly believed to be preparation for the Tories’ ultimate privatisation — the NHS.

Members of three unions — Unison, GMB and Unite — took strike action together.

Ambulance technician and GMB member Jacs Murphy, 54, picketing at West Midlands Ambulance Service’s Donnington ambulance station near Telford in Shropshire, said: “We are at the stage where we are losing staff day after day after day, because they cannot keep going on the way they are going, and that means we can’t look after our patients.

“People are dying, we see it all the time.

“Eventually, if we don’t have the funding for the NHS and we don’t look after the public as well and the staff as well, I feel we will lose the NHS — it’ll go private.

“When it goes private, we’ll be paying for ambulances, we’ll be paying for everything that we need, and there will be people that can’t afford it. They’re the ones that will suffer.”

On the same picket line paramedic and GMB member Katie Nelson, 35, said ambulance staff are “leaving the NHS in droves” because of poor pay.

She said the government’s refusal to offer a pay rise was a political choice.

“It’s not that the money isn’t there. They can find it when they want to,” she said.

In Yorkshire, ambulance technician and Unison member Ron Maxted, 43, was picketing at Leeds Central ambulance station at Saxton Gardens.

He told the Morning Star: “I joined the ambulance service to help people, but on most jobs the first thing I say when we arrive is ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get to you.’

“We’re striking over pay but we want the government to look at the whole picture: why are ambulances late?”

Paul Turner, North West Ambulance Service paramedic and GMB rep, said: “The NHS is collapsing, yet we have been waiting two weeks today for another meeting with ministers.

“The only way to solve this dispute is a proper pay offer. We are waiting.”

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham visited picket lines at ambulance stations in north-west England.

She said: “Of course it’s absolutely about pay, but it’s also about the very existence of the NHS.

“How could we ever have a situation, when no strike is taking place whatsoever, that 500 people are dying in Britain every week waiting for an ambulance? That is unbelievable.

“So we have to put a stake in the ground, we have to defend the NHS, and the public want us to do that.”

In response to the action, Mr Sunak said: “Of course it would be lovely to be able to wave a magic wand and just give everyone what they were demanding when it came to pay.

“But my job as Prime Minister is to make the right decisions for the country, and they are, more often than not, not easy decisions.”

NHS unions will strike together on February 6 in what is expected to be the biggest strike ever by NHS staff.

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