Physiotherapists to become latest group of NHS staff to go on strike Around 4,200 physios who work at 30 NHS trusts in England will stage a stoppage on 26 January and there will be a second walkout - this time at 60 trusts – on 9 February, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has announced. Its decision means that physios will join nurses and ambulance staff in taking industrial action in protest at a £1,400 pay rise for 2022-23 for NHS personnel. The CSP blamed ministers for the decision and said that “the lack of a concrete offer means there is currently no option but to announce strike action”. Junior doctors in England began voting this week on whether to strike over their demand for a 26% pay rise to take their salaries back to where they were a decade ago. Claire Sullivan, the CSP’s director of employer relations and union services, said: Not one physiotherapist or support worker wants to strike, especially at such a precarious time. But they have been left with no choice and their reasons for doing so are intrinsically linked to the current NHS crisis. Every day, patients struggle to get the care they need because of the chronic workforce shortages caused by a decade of under-investment. If the government doesn’t address pay then we risk losing even more valuable health workers making the consequences of those workforce shortages even worse for patients. The 26 January strike will affect services at acute hospitals, mental health care providers and also some specialist hospitals, including Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool and the Royal Papworth heart and lung hospital in Cambridge. Early evening summary More than 100,000 civil servants will join one-day strike action on 1 February in a major escalation of action by the PCS union. Health unions will not submit joint evidence to the NHS pay review body about the rise staff should get in 2023-24, in a move that threatens the system by which most health service pay is decided. A deal could be close to end the long-running RMT strikes on the railway, industry bosses have told MPs, adding that customers’ confidence is “ebbing away” as they start to switch to rival modes of transport. Rishi Sunak has said he is now registered with an NHS GP, having previously used private healthcare, during a prime minister’s questions dominated by the state of the NHS and the strikes by health and ambulance staff. Boris Johnson said he was at “the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now” at a No 10 Partygate event for which he was not fined by the police, ITV has reported. The Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen has lost the party whip, probably permanently, after he provoked widespread fury among colleagues and elsewhere by comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust. Tory peer says government being "disingenuous" in arguing anti-strike law just brings UK into line with other countries Ministers are defended their anti-strike law on the grounds that minimum service levels are not unusual in other European countries. At PMQs Rishi Sunak even turned this into a joke at Keir Starmer’s expense. He said: The International Labour Organisation supports minimum service levels. They are present in France, in Italy, in Spain. Normally he is in favour of more European alignment – why not now? But Lord Balfe, a Conservative peer, told the BBC’s programme that ministers were being “disingenuous” in making this argument. He explained: The European Trade Union Institute, which is the European trade union body, has done a survey of 30-odd countries in Europe, and the way in which they handle strikes, and … It is quite clear from the evidence that we are well up on the authoritarian end of that. Even where there are minimum service levels, they are often not used or enforced. The government is being disingenuous in what it is saying here. Balfe, who is president of British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), a union affiliated to the TUC, also said that No 10 consulted him before it published the legislation. He said he thought his feedback might have made a difference because the legislation is “not quite the legislation a week ago”. He went on: “Now we need to move a little further.” The government had originally been planning to raise the voting thresholds that unions must reach before a strike ballot is valid, but this proposal was dropped. Around 100,000 civil servants to stage one-day strike on 1 February Around 100,000 civil servants are to stage a 24-hour strike next month in an escalation of a bitter dispute over jobs, pay and conditions, PA Media reports. PA says: The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union announced that its members in 124 government departments and other bodies will walk out on 1 February. The union said it will be the largest civil service strike for years and signals a “significant escalation” of industrial action after a month of strikes by its members, including Border Force staff. The stoppage will coincide with the TUC’s “protect the right to strike” day, which was announced in reaction to the Government’s controversial legislation on minimum service levels during industrial action. Streeting claims Tory MPs will suffer at next election because ministers "think GP [system] is working" Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, told Tory MPs that ministers were leaving them “hanging out to dry at the next election” because they were refusing to accept that GP services were not working properly. Opening the debate on a Labour motion criticising the government’s record on the NHS, he said: Do you know what I have found most remarkable today in advance of this debate? I received a letter from the minister no less, who is unfortunately not in his place, to tell me that the current system of general practice is working. Referring to Tory MPs, he said: Bad news for you guys opposite who are facing the patients and the voters at the next general election – your ministers think general practice is working, your ministers therefore aren’t looking at plans to fix it, your ministers are leaving you hanging out to dry at the next election. Because patients can see that only Labour are looking at how to fix the front door in the NHS and rebuild general practice. Streeting also defended the plans he floated in an interview in the Times at the weekend to overhaul the way GP services are delivered. (See 3.25pm.) He claimed there were three options for the future of GP medicine: let it “wither”; accept it is “in decline and have something better to follow as it phase out over time” as he claimed Labour did; or “accept that GP partnership is valuable in which case rebuild it”. He went on: I am open minded about whether or not we phase out GP partnerships or whether we rebuild general practice, but what we can’t do is what the Conservatives are doing which is allow general practice to wither on the vine. Cleverly says Sinn Féin"s leader not invited to protocol talks because he wanted to hear from Northern Ireland politicians James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, has defended his decision not to invite the Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, to his meeting with Northern Ireland parties in Belfast today. Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, was invited, but she would not attend without McDonald, who is based in Dublin where she sits in the Irish parliament. With Sinn Féin not taking part, the SDLP stayed away too. Speaking to the media afterwards, Cleverly said: Sinn Féin were very welcome. My meeting here this morning was to meet with the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland. I will of course be going to Ireland in the near future and I’ll be meeting Irish politicians, but I very much wanted to hear from representatives of Northern Ireland. Cleverly said that, nevertheless, he had a “very useful” meeting, which focused on the Northern Ireland protocol. He said: It has reinforced a number of things which I have already raised with the [European] Commission and highlighted some real practical examples: the inability to get roses from England to sell here in Northern Ireland, a real-life practical example of something affecting a family-owned small business that we want to see thrive. Sunak signs defence agreement with Japanese PM Relations between the UK and Japan were “stronger than ever”, Rishi Sunak said, as the two countries signed a defence agreement to allow them to deploy forces in one another’s countries. PA Media says: The deal, signed during a visit to London by Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, will make the UK the first European country to have a reciprocal access agreement with Japan. The pact is part of the UK’s defence and foreign policy “tilt” towards the Indo-Pacific region, following an integrated review in 2021 that recognised the growing impact of China in the area. The access agreement has been years in the making, with former prime minister Boris Johnson agreeing a deal in principle in May during Kishida’s first official visit to Britain. No 10 called it the most important defence treaty between London and Tokyo since 1902. The formal signing ceremony took place at the centuries-old Thames-side castle, where Kishida was greeted by a guard of honour of Yeomen Warders, also known as Beefeaters. During the visit to the castle, Sunak and Mr Kishida were shown Japanese armour presented to King James VI in 1613 by the then-Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada of Japan to mark the first trade agreement between England and Japan. Physiotherapists to become latest group of NHS staff to go on strike Around 4,200 physios who work at 30 NHS trusts in England will stage a stoppage on 26 January and there will be a second walkout - this time at 60 trusts – on 9 February, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has announced. Its decision means that physios will join nurses and ambulance staff in taking industrial action in protest at a £1,400 pay rise for 2022-23 for NHS personnel. The CSP blamed ministers for the decision and said that “the lack of a concrete offer means there is currently no option but to announce strike action”. Junior doctors in England began voting this week on whether to strike over their demand for a 26% pay rise to take their salaries back to where they were a decade ago. Claire Sullivan, the CSP’s director of employer relations and union services, said: Not one physiotherapist or support worker wants to strike, especially at such a precarious time. But they have been left with no choice and their reasons for doing so are intrinsically linked to the current NHS crisis. Every day, patients struggle to get the care they need because of the chronic workforce shortages caused by a decade of under-investment. If the government doesn’t address pay then we risk losing even more valuable health workers making the consequences of those workforce shortages even worse for patients. The 26 January strike will affect services at acute hospitals, mental health care providers and also some specialist hospitals, including Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool and the Royal Papworth heart and lung hospital in Cambridge. The Labour opposition day motion calling for the creation of a select committee to consider the case for removing tax exemptions from private schools was defeated by 303 votes to 197 – a majority of 106. Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, is now opening the debate on the second opposition day motion, condemning the government for failing to recognise the crisis in the NHS. Labour rejects claim Starmer has abandoned promise to abolish universal credit In a speech this week Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said Labour would reform universal credit, but not abolish it. This led to accusations of a U-turn, because when Keir Starmer was running for Labour leader, one of his famous 10 pledges was that he would “abolish universal credit”. At the post-PMQs briefing, Starmer’s spokesperson insisted that this was not a broken promise because the party was committed to fundamentally reforming the system. This could involving giving the benefit a different name, the spokesperson suggested. This is true in the sense that welfare experts always understood the Starmer promise to mean Labour would reform the existing system, rather than abandon UC altogether and return to the status quo ante (having six separate benefits), or creating a new benefits system from scratch. But Starmer did explicitly say he would “abolish” UC, not that he would reform it. He was echoing the language used in Labour’s 2019 manifesto, which was also unequivocal. It said: Labour will scrap UC. We will immediately stop moving people on to it and design an alternative system that treats people with dignity and respect. Labour rejects Sunak"s claim Streeting proposing "disruptive, top-down, unfunded reorganisation" of GPs At the Labour party’s post-PMQs briefing Keir Starmer’s spokesperson defended the plans set out by Wes Streeting, the shadow health spokesperson, for an overhaul of the way GPs operate. In an interview with the Times, published on Saturday, Streeting said that he was considering ending the current partnership model for GPs, where they are not employees of the NHS but instead work as self-employed independent contractors. Streeting said: The truth is that the way that GP practices operate financially is a murky, opaque business. I’m not sure that people can honestly say exactly how the money is spent or where it goes. And from my point of view, as someone who wants to be a custodian of the public finances as health secretary, that would not be a tolerable situation. I’m minded to phase out the whole system of GP partners altogether and to look at salaried GPs working in modern practices alongside a range of other professionals. Streeting also said that GPs should no longer be the only gatekeepers to the NHS. He said that he would like to see pharmacies play a bigger role, and that in some cases people should be able to refer themselves directly to a specialist, without having to go through a GP. Referring to this at PMQs, Rishi Sunak, whose father was a GP, said We have a very clear plan to bring the waiting lists down and it is one that the NHS supports. I tell you what the NHS doesn’t need, what they don’t need is Labour’s only idea, which is for another completely disruptive, top-down, unfunded reorganisation buying out every single GP contract. After PMQs Starmer’s spokesperson rejected Sunak’s criticism, saying that under the Labour proposal no GP would be compelled to become a direct employee of the NHS. Instead, after consultation, the plan might be phased in over a generation, as new doctors are hired, the spokesperson said. Sunak and Macron to hold first UK-France summit since 2018 in Paris in March Rishi Sunak will head to France for a major summit with Emmanuel Macron on Friday 10 March, PA Media reports. The two leaders will meet in Paris for talks covering issues including security, the economy and measures to tackle the small boats carrying migrants across the English Channel. It will be the first UK-France summit since 2018 and marks the two leaders’ efforts to repair relations which have been strained by Brexit and disputes over the Channel issues. Relations between Sunak and Macron appear to be much more cordial than those between the French president and his predecessor Liz Truss. During her campaign to be Tory leader and prime minister she said “the jury’s out” when asked whether Macron was “friend or foe”.