Health News at Your Fingertips

Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon has described Westminster’s move to block the gender bill as “a full-frontal attack” on the Scottish parliament.

In a tweet posted in response to Alister Jack’s Section 35 announcement, the first minister said: “This is a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish parliament and its ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters.

“The Scottish government will defend the legislation and stand up for Scotland’s parliament.

“If this Westminster veto succeeds, it will be first of many.”

Nurses will stage two more strikes next month as a row with the government over pay shows no clear sign of reaching a resolution.

In an escalation of industrial action, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said nurses will strike on 6 and 7 February, with more NHS trusts taking part than during two days of strikes in December.

NHS Providers interim chief executive, Saffron Cordery, said the announcement was “very worrying”, PA reported.

She added:

The health service is already stretched far too thin as trust leaders try to cope with ongoing industrial action alongside other mounting pressures bearing down on the NHS.

We’ve seen how disruptive these strikes can be, and more extensive industrial action is likely to have an even greater impact. Nobody wants this to continue happening.

We understand how frustrated nurses feel, and how they have got into this point; below-inflation pay awards, the cost-of-living crisis, severe staff shortages and increasing workloads have created near-impossible conditions.

There are three weeks between now and these newly announced dates in February.

This is more than enough time for the government and the unions to open negotiations on pay for 2022-23 and avert more strikes.

Nurses at 55 NHS trusts in England are already scheduled to strike on Wednesday and Thursday this week, but the February action from the RCN will grow bigger and cover 73 trusts.

Twelve health boards and organisations in Wales will also take part in the two consecutive days of strikes.

More reaction on this story to follow.

Andrew Sparrow

The Scottish government is likely to challenge the UK government’s decision to block the gender recognition reform bill in the courts, Glenn Campbell, the BBC Scotland’s political editor, reports. A constitutional dispute like this would have to be resolved by the supreme court.

That’s all from me for tonight. My colleague Tom Ambrose is taking over now.

Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, has confirmed that the government is using article 35 to block the Scottish government gender recognition reform bill.

He says the UK government is willing to work with the Scottish government on an amended bill that would not affect UK-wide equalities law in the way he claims the Scottish bill would.

Here is his statement in full.

I have decided to make an order under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998, preventing the Scottish parliament’s gender recognition reform (Scotland) bill from proceeding to royal assent.

After thorough and careful consideration of all the relevant advice and the policy implications, I am concerned that this legislation would have an adverse impact on the operation of Great Britain-wide equalities legislation.

Transgender people who are going through the process to change their legal sex deserve our respect, support and understanding. My decision today is about the legislation’s consequences for the operation of GB-wide equalities protections and other reserved matters.

I have not taken this decision lightly. The bill would have a significant impact on, amongst other things, GB-wide equalities matters in Scotland, England and Wales. I have concluded, therefore, that this is the necessary and correct course of action.

If the Scottish government chooses to bring an amended bill back for reconsideration in the Scottish parliament, I hope we can work together to find a constructive way forward that both respects devolution and the operation of UK parliament legislation.

I have written today to the first minister and the Scottish parliament’s presiding officer informing them of my decision.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has said it will consider rerunning its industrial action ballot in England due to postal disruption, PA Media reports. PA says:

In England, 87% of NAHT members taking part in the union’s pay ballot voted in favour of action short of strikes, while 64% supported strikes.

However, the turnout was 42%, which is below the threshold required by law.

Paul Whiteman, NAHT general secretary, said:

It is incredibly frustrating that anti-trade union and anti-democratic legislation compelled us to conduct the ballot by post during a period in which the management of the Royal Mail refused to take action to ameliorate the disruption to the postal service.

We have to conclude that our democratic process has been compromised by factors outside of our control.

It sounds like we might have to wait quite a while for Boris Johnson’s memoirs. (See 3.30pm.) But Matt Hancock published his Pandemic Diaries before Christmas and, although they scored highly on the vanity scale, they were also more interesting than some of the reviews suggested they would be.

They were also in places quite critical of Johnson, which was not always apparent from the serialisation in the (pro-Johnson) Mail. So here are six revelations about Johnson from Hancock’s book that you probably won’t read in Johnson’s.

1) Hancock thought the failure to lock down earlier in the autumn of 2020 cost lives. Hancock describes how Johnson resisted a lockdown for weeks, despite Hancock and the scientific advisers pressing for one, and he describes Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, telling him on the day a lockdown was agreed: “Secretary of state, you’ve saved many lives with what you’ve done today.” And in an entry from March 2021, Hancock recalls sending a text message saying he had “mixed feelings” about what he had achieved over the past year. “Wish I’d won the argument sooner in the autumn. Could have saved a lot of lives,” Hancock wrote in the text message to Michael Gove. Hancock does not say directly in this passage whom he was arguing against, but he does not need to.

2) Hancock says officials felt they were under pressure not to put India on the red list for travel in the spring of 2021 because Boris Johnson was due to go there on a visit. In an entry for 18 April, he says:

There’s a major row brewing about putting India on the red list. My clinical advisers are very nervous of perceived pressure on the system on such a major decision because of an upcoming VVIP visit.

Hancock also says that at the end of March Priti Patel, the home secretary, was asking why India was not already on the red list. But at the time the government rejected claims that the delay in putting India on the red list was connected to the fact that Johnson was due to visit.

3) Johnson wanted everyone in the UK to be tested for Covid on the same day. Hancock says Johnson was excited when he learned Slovakia was planning to test its entire population on the same day and in November 2020 Hancock was asked to get a ministerial committee to agree. But colleagues thought the plan was “crazy” and Hancock had to tell No 10 it had “run into a brick wall”.

4) Johnson did not realise how long it would take for the government to build the 40 “new’ hospitals he promised at the 2019 election. In an entry from October 2020, Hancock says: “Boris has belatedly woken up to the fact that it’s now going to take ages to build the 40 new hospitals – including the one in his constituency.”

5) Johnson personally chose UK Health Security Agency as the name for the body set up during the pandemic to succeed Public Health England. Hancock himself did not like the name. He says he found it “boring and creepy at the same time”.

6) Johnson asked Whitty if he could get his dog, Dilyn, to have a blood test to see if he had Covid antibodies. Johnson said he thought Dilyn had had the virus. Hancock says Whitty “diplomatically” told Johnson he was not sure if there would be any point because the human antibody test might not work.

In the Commons Labour’s Rachael Maskell intervenes to accuse Grant Shapps of “fabricating” what happens when minimum service levels are agreed. She says she has negotiated a minimum service level agreement, but he hasn’t. She says agreements are negotiated on the ground between unions and employers to protect patients.

After being reprimanded by the deputy speaker, Maskell withdraws the word “fabricates”. MPs are not allowed to accuse each other of dishonesty.

In response, Shapps says Maskell is funded by the unions. And he says that in the most recent strikes the NHS did not know at a national level what cover there would be.

In the Commons Grant Shapps, the business secretary, is now opening the debate on the strikes (minimum service levels) bill.

In a joint statement on the NEU strikes, Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, the union’s joint general secretaries, said:

This is not about a pay rise but correcting historic real-terms pay cuts. Teachers have lost 23% in real-terms since 2010, and support staff 27% over the same period. The average 5% pay rise for teachers this year is some 7% behind inflation. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, that is an unsustainable situation.

The government has also been happy to sit by as their own recruitment targets are routinely missed. Teachers are leaving in droves, a third gone within five years of qualifying. This is a scandalous waste of talent and taxpayers’ money, yet the government seems unbothered about the conditions they are allowing schools and colleges to slide into. The reasons for the recruitment and retention crisis are not a mystery; the reports in the last week from the IFS and the NFER confirm the NEU argument.

The government must know there is going to have to be a correction on teacher pay. They must realise that school support staff need a pay rise.

If they do not, then the consequences are clear for parents and children. The lack of dedicated maths teachers, for example, means that 1 in 8 pupils are having work set and assessed by people who are not qualified in the teaching of maths. Anyone who values education should support us in this dispute because that is what we are standing up for. It is not us who should turn a blind eye to the consequences of government policy on schools and colleges.

The National Education Union says it will be organising strikes on seven days in February and March. It says:

The union is declaring seven days of strike action in February and March, though any individual school will only be affected by four of them. The first will be on will be on Wednesday 1 February, affecting 23,400 schools in England and Wales.

Teacher members in sixth form colleges in England, who have already been balloted and taken strike action in recent months, will also take action on these days in a separate but linked dispute with the secretary of state …

This means that the following constituencies of NEU membership are able to take strike action in pursuance of a fully-funded, above-inflation pay rise: teachers in England state-funded schools; teachers in Wales state-funded schools; support staff in Wales state-funded schools; and teachers in sixth form colleges in England.

The full list of projected strike days are as follows:

Wednesday 1 February 2023: all eligible members in England and Wales.

Tuesday 14 February 2023: all eligible members in Wales.

Tuesday 28 February 2023: all eligible members in the following English regions: Northern, North West, Yorkshire & The Humber.

Wednesday 1 March 2023: all eligible members in the following English regions: East Midlands, West Midlands, Eastern.

Thursday 2 March 2023: all eligible members in the following English regions: London, South East, South West.

Wednesday 15 March 2023: all eligible members in England and Wales.

Thursday 16 March 2023: all eligible members in England and Wales.

Here are the NEU figures strike ballot figures.

Teachers in England

In favour – 121,253

Against – 12,811

Majority in favour – 90.4%

Turnout – 53.3%

Teachers in Wales

Majority in favour – 92.3%

Turnout – 58%

Support staff in England

Majority in favour – 84.1%

Turnout – 46.5%

Support staff in Wales

Majority in favour – 88.3%

Turnout – 51.3%

Sixth form colleges in England

Majority in favour – 83.6%

Turnout – 36.2%

The National Education Union says teachers in England and Wales have voted to go on strike by huge majorities.

In Wales teaching support staff also voted to go on strike.

But in England, even though 84% of teaching support staff voted in favour, they did not meet the 50% turnout threshold for a strike vote to be valid.

The union says the England result for teachers is “the biggest ballot result of any union in recent times”.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has announced the “most significant package of combat power to date to accelerate Ukrainian success”. As PA Media reports, making a statement in the Commons, Wallace told MPs:

In December, I told the house that I was developing options to respond to Russia’s continued aggression in a calibrated and determined manner.

Today, I can announce the most significant package of combat power to date to accelerate Ukrainian success.

This includes a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks with armoured recovery and repair vehicles. We will donate AS90 guns to Ukraine. This batch comprises a battery of eight guns of high readiness and two further batteries at varying stages of readiness.

This donation will not impact our existing AS90 commitment in Estonia.

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, has condemned the execution of British-Iranian Alireza Akbari, warning Iran “the world is watching you and you will be held to account”. As PA Media reports, in a statement to MPs Cleverly said:

Let there be no doubt, [Akbari] fell victim to the political vendettas of a vicious regime.

His execution was the cowardly and shameful act of a leadership which thinks nothing of using the death penalty as a political tool to silence dissent and settle internal scores.

The house should be in no doubt that we are witnessing the vengeful actions of a weakened and isolated regime obsessed with suppressing its own people, debilitated by its own fear of losing power and wrecking its international reputation.

Our message to that regime is clear: the world is watching you and you will be held to account, particularly by the brave Iranian people, so many of whom you are oppressing and killing.

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has said it is “shameful” that the government is asking MPs to vote tonight on the anti-strikes bill when the impact assessment has not yet been published. Referring to the regulatory policy committee statement about this (see 12.59pm), Nowak said:

It’s shameful that MPs are being asked to vote blind on a bill that will have far-reaching consequences for millions of workers.

The government is deliberately railroading through this spiteful legislation to avoid proper parliamentary scrutiny.

The National Education Union says it will announce the results of its strike ballot at 5pm. Dr Mary Bousted, one of the union’s joint general secretaries, told Sky News this morning that, on the basis of its internal polling, the union expected the strike threshold to be met.

Under strike law, for a strike vote to be valid, at least 50% of those entitled to vote must participate in the ballot, and at least 40% of those entitled to vote must vote in favour.

The NAHT, which represents school leaders, is also announcing the result of its strike ballot at 5pm.

HarperCollins has announced that it will be publishing Boris Johnson’s memoir. In a statement Arabella Pike, publishing director at William Collins (one of its imprints), said:

This will be a prime ministerial memoir like no other. I look forward to working with Boris Johnson as he writes his account of his time in office during some of the most momentous events the United Kingdom has seen in recent times.

HarperCollins says that no publication date has yet been set. That is probably wise. As a journalist Johnson was notorious for ignoring deadlines, and he still has not published his biography of Shakespeare, which was orginally meant to be out in 2016 and for which he was reportedly paid an advance of £500,000. Johnson has also repeatedly been hinting that he thinks his career at the top of politics is not yet over, and a comeback would obviously set back publication even further.

This is from Tom Harwood of GB News on the gender recognition reform bill row.