Health secretary says as things stand category three emergency calls won’t be covered during 21 December strike
Good morning. Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has been doing the morning interview round this morning, mostly taking questions about the strikes that are about to hit the NHS. Mark Harper, the transport secretary, will be giving evidence to the Commons transport committee soon, and he will face a grilling about the rail strikes. And at 12pm Rishi Sunak will be up for PMQs where it is almost certain that strikes will be on the agenda too. This may be the pattern for much of winter.
Barclay was asked what services will be operating when ambulance staff in England and Wales go on strike on Wednesday 21 December, and he confirmed the message in the Daily Telegraph’s splash – that elderly people who have a fall will probably have to get to hospital on their own.
We’ve got further talks with the officials tomorrow on what are called the derogations – which bits of the service that they will offer.
They’ve said that they will continue to offer life-threatening service, so that’s the cat ones.
Of course, we can look at what contingency plans we can put in place, but they’re never going to cover the same amount as having 3,000 ambulances on the day, which is roughly what we have on a typical day. There is a risk if we can’t get ambulances to people.
