NIMBYSolar farm planned near prized landscapes meets fierce oppositionStuart MintingSat, 14 January 2023 
A plan to power almost a third of the households in North Yorkshire’s expansive Hambleton district with clean renewable energy by creating a solar farm has met with a wall of opposition.
While Lightrock Power and Econergy say their proposal to generate 45,000 MWh of electricity per year at Woolpots Solar Farm, near the ancient village of Husthwaite, could power 10,146 homes in Hambleton, the site is in the shadow of the North York Moors National Park, the Howardian Hills Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty as well as ancient village conservation areas.
As a consequence, the plan being considered by Hambleton District Council on Thursday has seen organisations ranging from Historic England to the Civil Aviation Authority raising serious concerns.
Following a local outcry the scale of the venture was cut to an area of farmland the equivalent of about 500 Olympic swimming pools.
The firm’s application states the development has been designed to minimise visual impact on the landscapes overlooked by the national park and AONB, glint and glare and impacts on heritage assets.
It adds: “The development will make a substantial contribution to the overall supply of affordable low-carbon renewable energy, making a contribution to the aims of the UK Renewable Energy Roadmap, UK Solar PV Strategy, UK Clean Growth Strategy, Draft Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan and the legally binding Net Zero 2050 emissions target.”
Some residents of nearby villages have backed the scheme, saying it would “help to eliminate carbon emissions and reduce the price of electricity generation”.
Farmland near Husthwaite Picture: GOOGLE
Supporters of the scheme have claimed solar panels are one of the least disruptive methods of energy production, and argued that “compared to planting trees they have very little effect on the land”.
However, of the hundreds of responses over the scheme, the overwhelming majority are fiercely opposed to the development.
Historic England, which initially raised concerns over the solar farm leading to the “coalescence of the surrounding conservation areas and settlements”, said the revised scheme would create an unacceptable amount of harm to heritage assets and village conservation areas.
Objecting to the plans, the Campaign for Rural England said the farm would lead to a significant loss of top quality farmland. Many objectors have said the high grade agricultural land is needed for domestic food production, at a time when food security has become even more pressing.
Both the national park authority and the AONB said the solar farm would represent an incongruous large-scale development in a rural landscape.
Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Authority has raised concerns over the safety of aircraft in the area from the solar panels’ glare, particularly as 33 small single engine aircraft are hangared at nearby Baxby Aerodrome.
Recommending the scheme be refused, planning officers said the cumulative impact on productive farmland, the aerodrome, landscapes and heritage assets meant the scheme’s significant public benefits did not outweigh the harm they would cause.
After the rampage: Brazil’s new leaders to fight hard in wake of ‘insane’ coup attempt
Tom Phillips in Brasília
Sat, 14 January 2023
Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters
Sônia Guajajara should have been making history last Tuesday afternoon, being sworn in as the head of Brazil’s first ministry for Indigenous peoples at a ceremony at the presidential palace in Brasília.
Instead, with that building wrecked last Sunday by thousands of far-right extremists, she sat in her office overlooking Brazil’s similarly ransacked congress, reflecting on the stunning attempt to overthrow one of the world’s biggest democracies.
“It was truly frightening … such insanity,” said the 48-year-old politician who hails from the Amazon and worked as a cleaner and nanny before becoming a leading Indigenous activist.
“They say they are patriots who are fighting for Brazil … [but] this is terrorism … and this was engineered by people with economic and political power,” Guajajara said, as her government battled to identify those behind the most serious outbreak of political violence since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985.
In the days since the insurrection – which came just a week after the leftist veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office as president – the scale of the alleged plot to overthrow Brazil’s democracy has become clear.
Lula’s administration has accused hardcore supporters of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, of attempting to stage a coup by storming the presidency, congress and supreme court. They believe that was aimed at encouraging security forces to rise up, allowing Bolsonaro to return from the US – where he has been since the eve of Lula’s 1 January inauguration – to retake power.
On Thursday, federal police reportedly found a document in the wardrobe of Bolsonaro’s former justice minister, Anderson Torres, which allegedly outlined a plan for the former president to seize control of the supreme electoral court to overturn October’s election, in which Lula won by more than 2m votes.
“Brazilian democracy has been unquestionably tarnished and is at risk,” the commentator Mauro Paulino warned on the GloboNews television network.
On Friday night, the supreme court announced Bolsonaro would be investigated as part of the inquiry into the alleged attempt to topple the country’s new government. Bolsonaro’s lawyer denied wrongdoing, calling the former president a “defender of democracy”.
Torres, who was security chief in Brasília at the time of the attacks, was arrested on Saturday morning after flying back to Brazil from the US – where he was purportedly on holiday when the rebellion took place. The former justice minister, whose arrest was ordered for alleged acts of omission, has denied involvement, claiming he planned to shred a document that had been taken “out of context”.
“Deep down, I think we have so many good intentions that we didn’t believe something like this might happen,” said Celso Amorim, one of Lula’s closest aides, in his office in the presidential palace on Wednesday afternoon, with hundreds of troops and an armoured vehicle stationed outside to prevent a repeat invasion.
Amorim, who was Brazil’s foreign and defence minister during Lula’s 2003-2010 administration, said he hoped the uprising had been nipped in the bud. “But I can’t rule out attempts, here and there, that will need to be prevented if possible, and repressed if necessary,” he said.
“We need to be really vigilant,” Amorim said. “We can’t just think it was something that happened and is over and that’s it.”
Many fear Brazil’s moment of danger is far from over given the support for Bolsonaro within the security apparatus, notably the armed forces and military police. Many believe such support partly explains the security failure that allowed extremists to run riot through Brazil’s capital.
Brazil’s new minister of Indigenous people Sonia Guajajara, new Minister for Racial Equality Anielle Franco, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and his wife, Rosangela ‘Janja’ da Silva arrive at the Planalto Palace for Guajajara's swearing-in ceremony in Brasilia on 11 January. Photograph: Sérgio Lima/AFP/Getty Images
Polls show an overwhelming majority oppose the turmoil. But 58 million voters backed Bolsonaro in the 2022 election, many of whom have embraced baseless social media claims that the vote was rigged in Lula’s favour.
In his first extended interview since taking office, Lula hinted at such nervousness, promising a “thorough screening” of those employed in the presidential palace because of suspicions that “hardcore Bolsonarista” staff and military officials had helped insurrectionists storm the building.
On Friday, Lula’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, told the Observer he believed the government now had “absolute control” over the situation, after making more than 1,800 arrests. “My impression is that the manner in which the government reacted will discourage any kind of new adventure because the punishments will be increasingly severe,” he said.
But details of last weekend’s rampage give a sense of the rightwing rage that have gripped parts of Brazilian society since Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 – and which will not disappear overnight.
Amorim said his office had emerged relatively unscathed when hundreds of extremists blitzed the building at about 3pm on Sunday, after surging through police lines. Lula’s official photographer and aide, Ricardo Stuckert, was less fortunate. His office was ransacked. Rioters ripped open computers and stole the camera Stuckert had used to document Lula’s 2022 campaign.
Related: How a far right assault on Brazil’s democracy failed
“They didn’t leave a thing,” said Stuckert who stayed in the palace until Monday to chronicle the destruction in a viral video. He remembered his shock on arriving back at the sacked palace with Lula at about 8pm on Sunday. Sitting in the palace by a masterpiece by the painter Di Cavalcanti, which had been slashed seven times, he said: “The feeling I have is that we are going to have to really fight so that our children and grandchildren are able to live in a country without violence.
“I think many of the people who came here to destroy the palace didn’t even know what they were doing to democracy,” he said. “It’s those who are behind all this that we have to worry about – the people who are bankrolling those people to do what they did.”
Nearly a week after the Bolsonarista mutiny, details of the identities of the alleged orchestrators are beginning to emerge. Speaking to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, the environment minister Marina Silva said part of the “enraged mob” hailed from the Amazon and included pro-Bolsonaro militants with links to illegal deforestation, mining, land-grabbing and fishing. Their anger was based on frustration that Bolsonaro’s era of “guaranteed impunity” was over, Silva said.
Other criminals hailed from south and southeastern states such as Paraná, Minas Gerais and São Paulo, where Bolsonaro also enjoys strong support.
Several pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers have been accused of inciting the violence on social media, and Brasília’s suspended pro-Bolsonaro governor, Ibaneis Rocha, has been questioned by federal police over his role in the security failure. Rocha has denied wrongdoing.
Guajajara will represent Brazil’s 307 Indigenous groups in her new job. “This is also an attack on our very presence in the government,” she said of Lula’s decision to bring Indigenous, black and female officials into his administration, to the frustration of Bolsonaro’s largely white, male movement. “It’s an attack on diversity – an attack on a democracy which has broadened, bringing us inside.”
Guajajara returned to the palace 24 hours after her cancelled swearing-in to take up her historic job. She took to the podium to address ministers and Indigenous leaders, including Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa.
Related: Lula suspects pro-Bolsonaro staff helped mob enter presidential palace
“We are here today, for this ceremony of courage, to show that destroying the presidential palace, the supreme court and congress will not destroy our democracy,” said Guajajara, flanked by the black favela activist Anielle Franco, who was being sworn in as racial equality minister. “Never again will we allow our country to suffer a coup.”
The audience applauded as Guajajara spoke, but outside, the heart of Brazilian democracy had been flooded with fire engines, police cavalry and special forces amid fears over fresh violence.
“The coup attempt is not over,” said one government insider. “It is still very much on.”
Rail companies given 'permission' by transport secretary to make new offer to unions this week
Sun, 15 January 2023SKY NEWS
The transport secretary has given rail operating companies "permission" to make a new offer to railway unions this week as the government hopes for an end to months of strikes.
Mark Harper told Sky News' Sophy Ridge that he had given the companies a "revised mandate" to go into negotiations in the coming days, saying there had been "big changes" in the government's approach since he took over the role from Grant Shapps.
But he said it was "important now that we give some space" to the two sides "to try and reach a conclusion".
Transport secretary quizzed on Sophy Ridge - politics update
Labour's Peter Kyle said the remarks showed there had been "a wasted year" under the previous transport secretary, who "refused to engage or even meet with unions" when the strikes began in 2022.
The RMT, along with other rail worker unions, have staged strikes across the country since June over jobs, pay and conditions.
Two of the unions involved covering smaller numbers of staff have reached settlements, but the RMT and train operating companies are still at loggerheads, especially when it comes to proposed reforms that could close ticket offices and increase driver-only train numbers, meaning no guards on board.
Mr Harper said this week's offer "would cover both pay and reform" in the sector, but denied reports the government had scaled back demands over driver-only trains.
"They've been in existence, frankly, since I was a teenager, which I'm afraid quite a long time ago," he told Sophy Ridge.
"Our general position on reform is that reform is still incredibly important, because by having generational reform on the railways... we generate the savings to pay for the pay awards to staff and still have a financially sustainable railway."
Read more:
Fresh wave of strikes this month - who is taking action and when
Nursing union threatens biggest strike yet
The transport secretary insisted that the two sides have "made some progress" and pointed to his own interventions as a boon to talks.
"We've made some progress and I hope we can make further progress," he said. "I want to stop these damaging disputes. They're bad for people who work on the railways and most importantly for passengers and the wider economy.
"I think we've made a big change since I became transport secretary and hope to make continued progress. I've made the changes that I think are necessary to get us on a path to that."
'Missed opportunity'
Mr Kyle praised Mr Harper's involvement but criticised the time it has taken for a transport secretary to get into the talks.
"The government sets fares... the time scales... the stations that each train has to stop at," he told Sophy Ridge.
"So the idea that for the entire summer when all of this unrest was fermenting between staff and unions and the government that Grant Shapps refused to engage or even meet with unions? It was a really missed opportunity.
"He should have been round the table, he should have been engaging, the government should have used the influence it has to try and broker some of these deals.
"So it's good that he's starting to now. But it is an acknowledgement we've had a wasted year."
Rail unions are far from the only sector taking industrial action, with nurses, ambulance workers, bus drivers and civil servants among those staging walkouts over the coming days and weeks.
Teachers are also striking in Scotland from tomorrow, with the results of ballots from other teaching unions in England expected to drop on the same day.
Mr Harper said "anything disrupting children's education will be very regrettable", especially after the impact of COVID.
And he said education secretary Gillian Keegan was meeting with unions "to listen to the concerns that teachers have got" and try to avert strike action.
UK
Teachers’ unions promise new strike ballots if walkout numbers miss threshold
The NAHT’s ballot over pay is the first in its 125-year history.
Michael Savage Policy EditorTHE GUARDIAN
Sun, 15 January 2023
Photograph: Peter Titmuss/Alamy
Teaching unions are warning they will be forced to reballot their members over strike action in the coming months if ministers continue to resist a “sensible solution” to the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention.
Three unions had been threatening walkouts over pay, which they say has led to teachers and teaching assistants making the “heartbreaking” decision to leave the profession. Last week it was revealed that despite about 90% of NASUWT members voting in favour of industrial action, the turnout, 42%, was below the required 50% threshold. Two more unions, the NEU and NAHT, will announce the results of their ballots on 16 January.
While hopes within the unions remain high that the strike action will be approved, some unions are warning that the strong support already demonstrated for strike action means they will feel obliged to launch a new attempt for walkouts should pay talks fail to progress.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, told the Observer that heads and teachers would expect their unions to keep fighting.
“I think it’s fair to say that just because a technical threshold hasn’t been met, the disputes don’t go away,” he said. “Members will still be expecting their union to find a solution with the employer. If a sensible solution isn’t reached, there’s always the possibility that members will vote in a second ballot, with those thresholds being met. If there is any relief the government might be feeling, they should think again.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the union NAHT. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/Alamy
Unions are already concerned that ballot papers may not have reached all members, and the effects of postal disruption will also be examined if the 50% turnout threshold is not met.
Whiteman warned that the erosion of pay over a decade was now putting huge pressure on teaching staff’’s vocational drive, with “heartbroken” teaching assistants now regularly being offered major pay increases to move into retail jobs.
“We’ve got this stupid situation at the moment in which highly skilled, very well-trained teaching assistants can garner more money working in a supermarket than they can looking after vulnerable children. Headteachers tell me that teaching assistants or support staff often bring them their resignation letter in tears. They have to leave the job they love and the children they love to support and are heavily invested in, because they can’t make ends meet. And supermarkets are able to pay them significantly more.
The teaching crisis isn’t so apparent because people don’t die in school. But they don’t get educated either
“At the moment there are huge numbers of children who don’t have a subject specialist teaching them. We don’t have enough maths teachers, we don’t have enough physics teachers, and we are finding it difficult to replace headteachers.
“The same crisis that you see in health is happening in education. The reason it isn’t so apparent or so dramatic is because people don’t die in school. But they don’t get educated either. If we don’t invest in that education, it has a very long-term impact on our country’s ability to be a major player on the world stage.”
More talks are expected between teaching unions and the Department for Education this week, despite a lack of progress so far. Some hope ministers will use discussions over the coming year’s pay deal to resolve the ongoing dispute over last year’s settlement. Most state school teachers in England and Wales had a below-inflation 5% pay rise in 2022.
The Observer has been told that most state schools in England and Wales will have to close completely on several days in February and March if the country’s biggest teaching union, the NEU, votes for industrial action. The NAHT’s ballot over pay is the first in its 125-year history.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “After two years of disrupted education for children and young people, families will be relieved that teachers from NASUWT did not choose to strike. The education secretary has arranged further meetings with union leaders to avoid harmful strike action. We have already met the unions’ request for a further £2bn for schools both next year and the year after in the autumn statement, and given teachers their highest pay award in 30 years.”
UK
High inflation is to blame for these strikes, not trade unions
Torsten BellTHE GAURDIAN
Sun, 15 January 2023
Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock
Strikes are all the rage. You’ll have noticed, if you want to take a train (or pass your driving test to avoid doing so). This is visible in official data, with 417,000 days lost to industrial action in October – high compared with the 450,000 lost a year during the 2010s. But taking a longer term view, strikes are heading down, not up: around 7m and 13m days a year were lost in the 80s and 70s respectively.
Recent research argues that strikes have fallen as debt levels rose from the 1980s on, because workers became wary of striking if loss of pay and fear of losing their job put them at risk of missing loan repayments. This is interesting but overstates debt’s role.
A better guide to the decline of strikes comes from current examples. High inflation is the trigger, raising the stakes for employers and workers negotiating pay, just as it did in the 70s. In contrast, the past few decades of low inflation meant fewer strikes.
Today’s industrial action is concentrated in the public sector. Why? Partly because of slow public sector pay growth, but also because that is where trade union presence is strongest after overall membership rates more than halved from 53% to 23% between 1980 and 2021.
Good luck having a strike without a union, so industrial action has shrunk. Some argue that’s a good thing, but fewer strikes don’t come free. Our own work shows that unions raise wages (union members earn 6% more than non-members in the UK and new research finds a 3% premium in Germany) and reduce wage inequality. We want to see the back of some things, such as double-digit inflation or bad employers, but not trade unions.
Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
Pat Cullen: 'We are prepared to strike all year if we need to'
Harry de QuettevilleTHE TELEGRAPH
Sun, 15 January 2023
Pat Cullen - Andrew Crowley
Next week, renewed Royal College of Nursing action will see a second round of nurses’ strikes, with thousands walking out again, on consecutive days, after the Prime Minister declined an offer of a 10 per cent deal on nurses’ pay.
But although Pat Cullen, the General Secretary of the RCN, has accused the Health Secretary Steve Barclay of being a “bully-boy”, and insists that current talks must alleviate an NHS crisis that is causing patients to die unnecessarily “every day”, she has dealt with far worse.
Having started her career in Belfast at the height of the Troubles, Cullen is no stranger to tough-nut men and negotiations on which lives hang. Indeed, back in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, there were times, she says now, when as an agent of the state – though just a nurse – she was viewed with mistrust, possibly even as a spy.
“I was moving around the Shankill Road, dominated by the [Loyalist paramilitaries] UVF, then coming back into the [staunchly Catholic] Falls Road. Doing that multiple times a day raised suspicion. It was the time of the hunger strikes, very difficult.”
Were there moments of danger, when she felt she was suspected of being an informer? “Absolutely. Particularly when you were moved, new to the area.” To smooth her passage, talks were held to establish her bona fides – what Cullen delicately calls “informal interviews with significant community leaders”.
I think of other bullyboy men, this time with guns. In those days, of course, if negotiations didn’t work out it was her own life that was on the line. So Cullen is not new to playing for high stakes.
Nonetheless, many said she had set the stakes far too high when nurses demanded a 19 per cent pay rise ahead of two days’ strike action last December. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak dismissed the bid as “obviously unaffordable”. Ministers noted grimly that more than £9 billion would have to be spent if such a settlement was extended across the whole NHS. The Government was offering 4 per cent, a £1,400 annual bump – though Barclay has since conceded that will have to increase.
Cullen now seems more accommodating, with hints that 10 per cent might seal the deal. But that does not mean she is climbing down. The RCN, she says, will extend strikes well into the second half of the year if necessary. The pickets will stay, she insists, “for as long as it takes for this Government to do the right thing for nursing staff. If we have to reballot our members after six months [to secure a mandate for more strikes], then that’s what we will do.”
Not only that, Cullen also vows strikes will get bigger, saying that RCN members at trusts which narrowly voted against current strike action are now clamouring to be reballotted, because they want to join the industrial action. This second round of nurses’ strikes will affect 55 trusts across England, up from 44 before Christmas.
“We’re talking about very significant trusts,” Cullen notes. According to the Nuffield Trust that could double the size of strikes. And the last walkouts saw 15,000 appointments cancelled. “All options [for action] are on the table,” says Cullen.
Then there are nurses’ other demands. More pay, says Cullen, would be “a step in the right direction”, but it is by no means the end of the matter: “This is about much more than pay.”
First up, is a mass recruitment drive “to fill the 47,000 unfilled, vacant nursing posts” to relieve pressure on those already in the job (the Nuffield Trust says there are 17,000 unfilled posts on any given day).
Then, Cullen wants “a separate pay structure for nursing, because the current structure is not working.” That structure – known as agenda for change – splits NHS roles by seniority into nine bands. Nurses start in Band 5, on £27,055. The average nurse wage was £35,989 a year before the last pay settlement. That’s slightly above the average national salary, according to the ONS, which is £33,000.
“Nursing is not an average job,” says Cullen, who notes that in other countries nurses are paid one-and-a-half times or double the national average. By contrast here, she says, they start low and get stuck low, marooned in Band 5, without the chance to progress up the pay scale.
There’s more: travel expenses. “Our nurses are spending up to £500 a month travelling, simply because they cannot afford to live close to their place of work,” she points out. Beyond that, there is “the debt that our student nursing population joins our profession with, we need to find ways of addressing that as well”. A report by the House of Commons last year found that the average student debt for nursing – which since 2009 has required a degree – is £35,000.
Finally, Cullen wants legislation in place that absolves nurses of responsibility for ensuring safe levels of staffing. That, she says, is up to politicians in Westminster, “not with ward sisters battling every day to try and fill vacant posts”. Without such safer nursing laws, she insists, if something goes wrong it is the ward sister who gets clobbered. It is a bit rich, she argues, for the Government to push through anti-strike laws enforcing a minimum safe service, when nurses have long been calling for minimum safe staffing levels.
But therein lies the nub of the matter. The Government is focused on doing more with existing staff, on productivity and efficiency, and the RCN’s priority is numbers: numbers of staff, and the numbers on their pay packets. So far, it has led to a dialogue of the deaf.
Cullen has met Barclay twice, and each time the meetings proved fruitless. At the beginning of this week, Sunak appeared to signal a softening attitude – hopes for a settlement soared, only to be dashed again. The problem, says Cullen, was that unions were asked to “find efficiencies from within the NHS, so that [Barclay] can go to the Treasury. In other words: ‘You find the money and we’ll see if we can do a deal.’”
Cullen describes the proposal as “absurd”. “We’re not in a position to find the money from the system,” she says. “We don’t manage the system.”
She is, however, happy to consider productivity improvements. “We’re always looking for opportunities for efficiency. But it’s very, very difficult to look for efficiency savings when people are constantly trying to mitigate risk every day.”
Government talks with the nurses seem to have become a battleground between the sexes. Cullen’s “bullyboy” comments enraged Barclay and, in what soon becomes apparent is not an unusual tactic, she softens her tone without entirely withdrawing her claim. “I don’t want to personalise it because that will be wrong of me to do. Barclay and the PM have very difficult jobs,” she says.
“But they have to also understand that I’m leading a profession that’s 90 per cent female and sometimes their actions lead this profession to believe that there is a macho or bullyish approach to how they make decisions.” I ask for an example. She says that nurses are patronised by those who “devalue caring”, who dismiss it as “women’s work” which is not skilled, and “doesn’t need to be a graduate profession. Those sorts of things are not helpful when you’re in a period of negotiation where you’re trying to build up relationships and trust.”
By her account, Barclay – without wanting to personalise it – emerges as something of a boor. “It’s his job to listen to me. He has a responsibility. And when you feel constantly that he is turning his back on the profession, it leaves all of us feeling rather nervous about where we’re going.” A ministerial spokesperson has rejected that description, saying Barclay has “utmost respect for nurses”.
Talks have not become so bitter as to be called off, though. When we meet – on Wednesday – Cullen’s office is trying to firm up a meeting with Barclay for the following day. She strongly hints that a one-off, cost-of-living payment effectively bumping up the 2022 pay deal, as mooted last week, would – in tandem with a rise of around 10 per cent this year – be enough to call off strikes. “I’ll seriously consider that.” As yet, though, the “Government is just so far away from what our members are expecting and requiring.”
Yet what precisely is the dispute about: pay or conditions? In the past, Cullen’s principal complaint seems to be about a crumbling NHS preventing nurses caring for their patients and “doing their job properly”. But an extra £3,500 a year in nurses pockets would do nothing to change that. Better pay, she counters, would help with staff retention and recruitment. And that would improve conditions.
I wonder what those conditions will look like if she follows through on her threat to pursue strikes throughout the year. Will the public still be onside? “We haven’t abandoned our patients,” she claims, despite the cancelled treatments. “We’ve been very careful about our derogations. Every survey that comes out shows the trust the public have in our profession, that was certainly borne out on every picket line that I visited on the two days.”
It’s true. Public support is strong, though it is not limitless. When strikes were first announced last November, 59 per cent of Britons supported the nurses’ strikes. A month later, as action got underway, that fell to 50 per cent. There is now some evidence that support is rising once more. After more than a century strike-free, it’s quite the gamble.
Yet Cullen is adamant it is the right thing to do – “It is not about me,” she says. “This is not my strike.” It was the members – the RCN represents around 300,000 nurses, around two-thirds of the profession – who were “very, very clear”. That may be true, but the fact is that this is the second time she has defied tradition to call a strike, after leading a walkout in Northern Ireland in 2019 as the union’s chief there. In April 2021, she was appointed General Secretary of the whole RCN.
Pat Cullen - Andrew Crowley
It is a sequence that makes her sound like a militant throwback. But in her blue suit, with her cautious, almost nervous manner, finding the precise words she needs, she seems anything but a firebrand. Instead, perhaps as a result of her upbringing, she comes across as committed, but modest.
She was born in 1965, the youngest of seven children, six of them girls. Her father, Paddy, was a farmer in County Tyrone, who died when she was 13. Still, she had “a really happy childhood” until, to her huge distress, Annie, her mother, died suddenly when she was 18.
The pain of that loss was somewhat softened by the comfort of her siblings, the oldest of whom – Bridie – is 20 years her senior. Five of the six girls became nurses working in Ireland, including Petra, just 18 months older than Pat, to whom she remains devoted (“She’s my best friend as well as a sister. There’s never a single day goes by that I don’t call her as I leave the office”).
It was Petra who helped Pat pass her 11-plus, a result that secured a place in Loreto Convent Grammar School in Omagh. But, by her own admission, she found the convent regime difficult, so she returned to college in her hometown of Carrickmore. From there, she became a trainee nurse. Degree-less, she would today, of course, be rejected by the profession.
She started in Holywell psychiatric hospital in Antrim, ending the practice in which patients were routinely punished by having precious personal items removed. Then she moved to West Belfast, beginning her delicate mission as a community nurse across the sectarian divide. Soon she was head of nursing at a local healthcare trust, and by her early 30s she had joined the Department of Health as Nursing Officer.
She only joined the RCN seven years ago. Three years in, she led her fellow members in Northern Ireland on strike. No one doubted the justice of their cause. Because Stormont had been so frequently suspended, pay deals had simply not been passed. Nurses found their pay far behind peers on the mainland. In the end – Barclay take note – the pickets and public pressure forced a deal, not just for pay but also safe staffing levels.
When she arrived at the top of the RCN, whose governing council was male-dominated, she was greeted by scandal. Tales of sexual misconduct were rife. Cullen commissioned a report whose findings, which were leaked last October, made grim reading: the RCN’s annual conference was damned for its booze-fuelled “sexual culture … in which the risk of exploitation is significant”. The council was accused of bullying and harassment. Allegations flew of “abuse, grooming, preying”.
“It was a very difficult time,” admits Cullen. “We let our members down, and I’ve apologised on a number of occasions to them for letting them down.” A new council is now in place, and Cullen says that if a follow-up report identifies “any reason to have a criminal investigation”, she will refer colleagues to the police.
There is scandal elsewhere in her purview too, though one she is keener to talk about. Nurses are being recruited, she says, from so-called “red list” countries which, often wracked by poverty, desperately need the healthcare workers themselves.
Officially, the Government has banned such hiring drives. Worse, Cullen says, she understands “these nurses are arriving… and having their passports confiscated by social care providers, and then told if they wish to leave and break their contract, they have to pay a penalty of as much as £14,000 to actually get out and return. I do believe that there’s modern slavery being operated in some parts of our healthcare system.”
Moreover, Cullen says she raised the matter last year with Jeremy Hunt, when he was chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee: “He acknowledged very clearly that it was absolutely wrong.” But nothing was done. “Times move on,” says Cullen. “He found himself in a different post.” Such tales only underline how hard recruitment can be.
I stand up to leave. Cullen will soon be making her daily call to Petra, these days more emotional than ever. Five years ago, Petra was diagnosed with cancer. Despite what Cullen calls “a little bit of a setback”, she is now “brilliant, everything moving in the right direction.” It can’t be easy being unwell and in healthcare. Cullen smiles, telling of how her sister pestered Enda, Cullen’s husband, who is a GP, and her son, Shane, a doctor, for information after her diagnosis. You can’t pull the wool over a sick nurse’s eyes.
Inevitably, though, the community that surrounds the RCN General Secretary most powerfully is a community of women. And we drift back again to her time navigating the Shankill and Falls Roads, as tense and bloody as any hospital ward.
“There was internment, men were on the run. So the people who helped us through were the women of both communities. It was so hard but they were incredible. They were strong. It was the women who got us through. I’ve learned so much from them.”
Public support for NHS strikes soars amid warnings they put ‘lives at risk’
Camilla TurnerTHE TELEGRAPH
Sun, 15 January 2023
NHS strikes doctors nurses ambulance workers industrial action - Guy Smallman/Getty Images
Public support for striking NHS staff has increased, despite warnings that walkouts put “lives at risk”.
Doctors and nurses are the only professions for which there is now more sympathy for industrial action compared to six weeks ago, a new poll found.
It came as nurses in England prepare for a fresh round of strikes for two days next week, with union bosses saying they have been “left with no choice” after their demands for a pay rise were not met.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) already held two strikes in December, which resulted in 30,000 operations and appointments being cancelled.
On Jan 10, Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, said that striking ambulance workers were putting “lives at risk” as he proposed new laws requiring minimum levels of service from ambulance staff, firefighters and railway workers during industrial action.
However, a poll, carried out by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for The Telegraph, revealed that 59 per cent of British voters said they support strike action by doctors and nurses when asked this week. This is up from 50 per cent when the same question was asked on Nov 30.
Meanwhile, support for all other professions that voters were asked about ebbed away over the same time period.
Public backing for striking rail workers fell from 51 per cent six weeks ago to 45 per cent this week, after a series of crippling walkouts in recent weeks which wreaked havoc on the country’s train network.
Support for striking civil servants dropped from 42 per cent to 35 per cent after the military was called in to cover for Border Force staff walking out over Christmas.
The British public appeared the least sympathetic to lawyers and barristers going on strike, with just over a quarter, 26 per cent, saying they would support them to walk out, down from 38 per cent last time.
Last August, criminal barristers voted to go on strike indefinitely over pay, but they ended it in October after accepting the Government’s improved pay offer.
Philip van Scheltinga, the director of research at Redfield & Wilton Strategies, said: “In the past month, striking nurses have done better than striking rail workers in gaining sympathy from the public.
“For starters, their strikes have been comparatively less disruptive to the public. Hospitals have kept running, while trains have been shut down completely.”
He pointed out that nurses have run a better information campaign regarding their strikes, adding: “They’ve taken great advantage of the rarity of nurses strikes, their primarily female workforce, the unpopularity of the Government – their direct employer – and the public’s predisposition to view the NHS favourably to begin with.”
Junior doctors are threatening to strike for three days in March if they win a ballot on industrial action. The British Medical Association has already said that junior doctors are “very likely” to vote in favour of strikes, as part of a campaign to see pay rise by more than one quarter.
Dr Vivek Trivedi, the co-chairman of the body’s junior doctors committee, said: “The NHS is facing a crisis like no other: patients waiting in corridors, staff breaking down in tears during shifts, and doctors simply not able to offer the care patients deserve.
“The public can see this is not a situation that can continue. They, like doctors, are crying out for a government that will address the crippling staffing shortage that led us here.”
Pat Cullen, the general secretary of the RCN, said: “The public have been unwavering in their support for nursing throughout this dispute. After months of digging in, the Government needs to listen to what the public wants and get round the table and negotiate. The public supports our strike action. As they know, when nurses speak, they speak for patients.”
In an interview with The Telegraph, Ms Cullen said the union would keep striking for “as long as it takes” and expand the walkouts to more NHS trusts unless the Government gives ground.
“If we have to reballot out members after six months [to secure a mandate for more strikes], then that's what we will do,” she said.
She said that RCN members at trusts which narrowly voted against the current strike action now wanted to be reballoted to join the walkouts.
In the interview, Ms Cullen also said that Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, had at times alienated the female-dominated nursing profession by giving the impression “that there is a macho or bullyish approach to how they make decisions”.
“Those sorts of things are not helpful when you’re in a period of negotiation where you’re trying to build up relationships and trust,” she said.
Speaking about Mr Barclay, she said: “It’s his job to listen to me. He has a responsibility. And when you feel constantly that he is turning his back on the profession, it leaves all of us feeling rather nervous about where we’re going.”
The Department for Health and Social Care declined to comment.
‘People realise what we’re doing is right’: how nurses won PR battle over NHS strikes
Toby Helm Political editorTHE GUARDIAN
Sat, 14 January 2023
Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer
Sara Gorton thought the Covid pandemic was as bad as things could get for the NHS. But now, as nurses, ambulance staff and other health workers plan more strikes in a service already on its knees, the woman leading pay negotiations for the health unions believes she was wrong. “This is worse – because it is a situation we are in because of political choice,” she says.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak and his ministers like to portray union leaders as leftwing militants, modern-day Arthur Scargills. By doing so they believe they can turn the public against the strikers as the disputes drag on and sympathy wears thin.
But Gorton, the head of health at Unison, the country’s biggest union, and chair of the NHS Staff Council representing staff in pay talks with ministers and employers, does not fit that stereotype at all.
Mild-mannered by nature but prepared to speak some brutal truths, she is a lethal weapon for those fighting for better pay. Armed with 20 years of experience of NHS pay rounds, Gorton is furious at the political games being played with the health service.
Covid was global and beyond our control, she says. But the current disaster is made by Tory politicians in Westminster. “With the pandemic, it felt like we were responding to something that was nobody’s fault. Whereas this feels like the people who are making decisions, particularly about funding, don’t care.”
It is a strong accusation to make against those she is negotiating with but she seems confident of when to lay things on the line, and when to be businesslike around a table. She describes meetings with ministers and officials, including one last Monday which yielded the first tentative signs of progress, as “always civil”. “They are cordial. We don’t sit in rooms and shout at people. But the steely side of me does come out. I am not a pushover.”
That is clear as she criticises ministers again and says unions are in tune with the public. “If you really cared about the population, you would see all of the opinion polls, the social attitudes surveys, that demonstrate that people in the UK prize having a good and efficient health service almost above everything, and you would reflect that in the way you run the country.”
In the battle for public opinion – the contest for hearts and minds – it is the unions who, if anything, seem to be winning in the early weeks of 2023.
The Sunak tactic of trashing the unions in the Commons, and claiming Labour is in their pockets week in, week out at prime minister’s questions, seems to be in serious danger of backfiring – and the likes of Gorton can sense it.
Ambulance workers in Newham, east London, during the second round of strikes last week. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images
Our Opinium poll on Sunday shows the nurses and their leaders are far more popular than the government. While 34% of the public approve of the nurses’ handling of the dispute, 21% disapprove. Just 14% approve of the government’s stance, while 48% disapprove. Figures on the ambulance dispute are also tilted heavily in favour of the strikers. Labour’s lead is up two points since the last poll three weeks ago, after a period in which the news has been dominated by the crisis in the NHS and strikes.
There is other evidence that the unions are drawing strength from the current crisis. Health unions at the heart of the dispute, such as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), have seen their memberships soar over recent weeks. The RCN’s is understood to have leapt by around 10% since last summer and has hit an all-time record of more than 500,000. Unison too reports strong growth.
One union source said: “People realise what we are doing is right. They identify with the cause.”
Last week, in a stilted party political broadcast, Sunak made no mention of the NHS strikes, and instead talked about how the government had pumped in record resources to pay for more more nurses and more doctors. But there are signs that others at the top of government, including the health secretary, Steve Barclay, are growing increasingly concerned at the escalating crisis.
New figures showing the worst ambulance response times on record in England caused serious alarm among Tory MPs and inside the government. The number of people waiting 12 hours or more to be admitted to A&E reached an all-time high. Average response times for people with a stroke, severe burns or chest pain was 93 minutes, five times the target of 18 minutes.
One senior Tory MP said toughing out the pay dispute and insisting there was no more money than the sums already offered was leading his party to certain disaster. “If this goes on into the spring and close to the May local elections, we will be murdered,” he said.
Gorton says that, at last Monday’s, talks Barclay hinted for the first time that there needed to be a change of approach and that more money than had been previously offered had to be put on the table. “I think he now wants to work with us to do this,” she said. “Whether he can or not, I think, depends on the chancellor [Jeremy Hunt] – which is ironic given his previous role [as health secretary] – and the prime minister.”
She added: “What is needed immediately is to settle the dispute, and what is required to do that is for the chancellor to commit funding over and above what has been invested this year so far.”
Intriguingly, Gorton told the Observer that Barclay actually asked that the unions help him persuade the Treasury that more investment in the NHS would yield greater efficiency. Paying more in wages and salaries would help retain staff, whereas leaving the recruitment crisis to worsen would add to problems and increase costs.
Asked if she could see some light ahead, Gorton said: “I can. Whether the light is extinguished quickly or not depends on the chancellor and the prime minister. The pressure has now moved upwards, and it feels like the secretary of state now understands the need not only for a swift resolution to the dispute but the need to invest in pay in order to deliver on promises for service renewal.”
Related: Most UK voters still back strikes by nurses and ambulance crews
She added: “Last Monday, he talked about asking us to help make the case to the Treasury for the investment needed. All of the agreements I have been involved with in the past have involved a certain amount of showing the benefits of investing.”
This weekend, Gorton is writing to Sunak and Hunt to ask them to host a meeting with the unions. The unions, it seems, may be succeeding in making sure that the crisis from now on is focused on Downing Street.
UKNurses to join picket lines at Colchester Hospital entrance - here is when
Liam Maynard
Sat, 14 January 2023
The Royal College of Nursing confirms picket lines will be held at Colchester Hospital's entrance (Image: PA)
NURSING staff at Colchester Hospital will take to the picket line next week.
Scheduled strikes are due to take place on January 18 and 19, from 7.30am, till 7.30pm, with picket lines set to ensure the nurses have their voices heard.
The Royal College of Nursing says picket lines will take place at the main entrances of both the Colchester Hospital and Ipswich Hospital on both days.
In a statement released on their website, the RCN said: “If you’re an RCN member scheduled to work on 18 or 19 January at this employer, you can participate in strike action by withdrawing your labour and not working on one or both of these dates.
“As a member of the RCN employed at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, you have the right to be part of lawful strike action at any of the picket lines above."
They further advised anyone not working on the days of the scheduled strikes can attend the picket lines, as well as members of the public, to show solidarity with striking nurses.
Responding to the strikes, hospital bosses confirmed earlier this week some patients may be informed that their non-urgent operations and appointments will have to be moved.
Alongside thousands of other members of the Royal College of Nursing, strike action will take place across the country on the same days, in response to staff shortages and low wages.
Nick Hulme, chief executive of ESNEFT had previously advised that the hospital had been preparing for the strikes, planning around what the impact of ESNEFT patients could be.
He said: "We are planning for all eventualities to keep patients safe – that is our top priority. We encourage all patients to come for their appointments unless they hear otherwise.
“We want to see a resolution as soon as possible to make sure we can continue to focus on delivering high-quality and compassionate patient care.”
DOCTORS AS PROLETARIANSSir Keir Starmer: I will slash ‘nonsense’ bureaucracy in the NHS
Camilla Turner
Sat, 14 January 2023
Writing for The Telegraph, Sir Keir Starmer says the situation for NHS patients is now 'intolerable and dangerous' - Brian Lawless/PA
Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to slash “mind-boggling” NHS bureaucracy, as he said the service must either “reform or die”.
The Labour leader cautioned that “well-meaning reverence” for the health service has “supplanted reality”, adding that it must not be seen as “off limits” for criticism.
He outlined a series of reforms that a Labour government would bring in, which include allowing patients to bypass GPs to make self-referrals to specialists, as well as gradually turning family doctors into direct NHS employees.
It is the first time Sir Keir has publicly backed the proposals, previously mooted by Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary.
Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Keir said the situation for NHS patients is now “intolerable and dangerous”, adding: “The idea the service is still ‘the envy of the world’ is plainly wrong.”
His remarks - which will be seen as a break from Labour’s traditional veneration of the NHS - come as nurses prepare for a fresh round of strikes on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
Sir Keir also outlined Labour’s plans to crack down on the “bureaucratic nonsense” that patients encounter every day in the health service.
“Why can’t people with persistent back problems self-refer to physio?” he said. “Why if you notice bleeding do you have to get a GP appointment, simply to get the tests that you then do yourself at home?
“Every patient will have their own experience of these mundane inconveniences and inefficiencies. Across the system and across the country each one adds up, resulting in a mind-boggling waste of time, energy and money, all of which could be better spent.”
The NHS is facing one of its worst winter crises, with medics warning that hospitals are running out of oxygen because of the number of patients being treated in corridors and ambulances.
Heart attack victims were left waiting an average of 90 minutes for an ambulance last month – the worst waiting times on record.
Sir Keir said the situation for NHS patients is now 'intolerable and dangerous' - PA
Sir Keir warned that “investment alone won’t be enough” to rescue the NHS and said he will tackle “ingrained thinking” among hospital managers to force change and modernisation of the service.
His message is a direct challenge to Rishi Sunak, who has made cutting down NHS waiting list times one of his key priorities as Prime Minister.
On Saturday night, Downing Street announced plans for a major expansion of his "virtual wards" initiative, whereby patients are treated at home as part of efforts to free up hospital beds.
Sir Keir said Mr Sunak’s promise to get waiting lists down is merely the “path of least resistance” and the “stale route to further decline” of the health service.
He described how the model of using doctors as the only “front door” of the NHS is no longer viable, as younger doctors are increasingly put off from taking on the “burdens and liabilities” of running GP practices.
Currently, GPs are self-employed and run their own practices under contracts awarded by the NHS. Sir Keir wants to gradually wind this down and make GPs direct employees of the NHS.
“It’s time for us to think about a new, sustainable system, one that allows GPs to focus on caring for patients rather than the admin that comes with effectively running a small business,” said Sir Keir.
“This would be a big change and it won’t happen overnight. But I am a pragmatist, focused on what works for patients.
“As GPs retire and those contracts are handed back, I want to phase in a new system that sees GPs fairly rewarded within the NHS, working much more closely with other parts of the system.”
