Unions calls talks ‘bitterly disappointing’ and an ‘insult’ despite health secretary accepting no end to strikes without higher pay – live

NEU teaching unions says it made ‘no concrete progress’ in talks on pay and strikes with Gillian Keegan

Sally Weale

Leaders of the National Education Union said there had been “no concrete progress” after their meeting with Gillian Keegan, the education secrtary, about pay and the proposed teachers’ strike.

They said the Department for Education was “downplaying” any prospect of movement on this year’s pay deal, but there was “a promise of further discussions” for which they would clear their diaries.

In a joint statement, Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, joint general secretaries of the NEU, said:

It is welcome that a meeting was held – and we believe that union ballots were crucial in the meeting taking place.

There is a promise of further discussions both on the government’s evidence to the STRB [the pay review body] for next year and on changes to pay during this year.

There is no concrete progress but the existence of these discussions is due to the possibility of industrial action. We have offered to clear our diaries for such talks, but we have no dates yet.

However, the Department for Education was definitely downplaying the prospects of movement this year – and wasn’t at all specific about next year.

If the government wants to avoid industrial action then there is only a small window of opportunity before the NEU declares its ballot result [on Monday next week] and its plans for action.

The GMB is the third major union representing ambulance staff, and it has also issued a downbeat assessment of the talks with Steve Barclay, the health secretary. Rachel Harrison, the GMB national secretary, said:

Today’s talks fell well short of anything substantial that could stop this week’s strikes.

There was some engagement on pay – but not a concrete offer that could help resolve this dispute and make significant progress on the recruitment and retention crisis.

The public expects the government to treat these talks seriously – it’s time they got on with it.

The GMB also said more than 10,000 ambulance staff would go ahead with its strike on Wednesday. Unison ambulance workers are also on strike that day.

According to ITV’s Paul Brand, a GMB spokesperson has been even more critical, describing the time set aside for the meeting as “an insult” (a description also used by Unite, although in a slightly different context – see 12.46pm).

The Royal College of Nursing has described its meeting with Steve Barclay, the health secretary, as “bitterly disappointing”. In a statement Joanne Galbraith-Marten, the RCN’s director of employment relations and legal services, said:

There is no resolution to our dispute yet in sight. Today’s meeting was bitterly disappointing – nothing for the current year and repeating that ‘the budget is already set’ for next year.

This intransigence is letting patients down. Ministers have a distance to travel to avert next week’s nurse strike.

Unison’s head of health, Sara Gorton, said that the meeting with Steve Barclay, the health secretary, did not produce any “tangible” concessions and that her union would not be calling off its strike by ambulance staff later this week.

But Gorton was also more positive about the meeting than her Unite opposite number, Onay Kasab. (See 12.46pm.) She said it was a “very civil meeting” and that they were talking about pay, which was “definitely progress”.

She also said that Barclay accepted that health workers would have to be offered more pay as part of the settlement for this year, 2022-23. Until recently ministers were arguing that this year’s pay deal was closed, and that any compromise would have to focus on what was on offer for next year.

Asked if they were talking about pay for the current financial year, she said:

The secretary of state is very, very clear that resolving this dispute means not just talking about pay for the next period but actually pay for the current year. So very clear that resolving the dispute will take boosting pay ahead of 1 April.

Gorton also said that Barclay asked the unions him to help him make the case to the Treasury for health getting more investment. “We’ll certainly do that,” she said.

Asked whether she felt Barclay was on the side of the unions, she replied:

You might interpret that. I mean, it was very clear that what is needed in order to resolve the dispute is investment.

The Treasury is in the position to unblock that, so I guess the message today is to put pressure back on the chancellor and the prime minister to say the dispute is resolvable.

The strike talks at the Department for Transport do not seem to have gone well either. As PA Media reports, Mick Whelan, the general secretary of the train drivers’ union Aslef, held his arms out in a wide shrugging gesture as he left the DfT building in central London, indicating that talks with ministers had not gone well.

When asked by PA whether any progress had been made in the ongoing pay dispute, Whelan said: “I’ve got nothing to say.”

Pressed again about how negotiations had gone by Sky reporters, he added: “I’m not going to make any comment today.”

Whelan was meeting Huw Merriman, the rail minister. At health and education, the unions were meeting the secretary of state (Steve Barclay and Gillian Keegan respectively).

Unite, one of the unions involved in talks with Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has described what was put on the table this morning as an “insult” to members.

Unite is one of several unions that represent ambulance workers, and Onay Kasab, its national lead officer, told reporters that the talks had gone “not well” after he emerged from his meeting with Barclay. He went on:

Unfortunately, the government have missed yet another opportunity to put this right. We came here in good faith. What they want to talk about is productivity.

Our members are working 18-hour shifts. How you become more productive with that I do not know.

Today, unfortunately, despite us showing up in good faith, the government have missed yet another opportunity to put this right and what will happen is that a strike action taking place by Unite members, our ambulance workers … [will be taking place on 23 January].

Asked if Barclay had mentioned the possibility of a one-off payment for health staff for the current financial year, Kasab said the union was told that, to justify a payment like this, workers would have to come up with productivity savings. He went on:

That is absolutely ludicrous. This isn’t a factory we’re talking about.

We are talking about people who are working well beyond their contracted hours anyway just to get the job done, because they can’t hand patients over because they care so much.

So for the government to be talking about productivity in return for a [payment] is an insult to every single one of our members.

You all know what’s going on in hospitals at the moment. You all know how hard everybody is working. So today is an insult to our members.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), told journalists that the government had to put “new money on the table” as she arrived at the Department for Education for talks with Gillian Keegan, the education secretary.

Without the offer of new money, the talks would be pointless, Bousted suggested. She said:

She is going to tell us about the government’s evidence about the pay review body – which isn’t actually independent – and then she’s going to listen to our concerns, so this is in no sense a negotiation meeting.

If this meeting is going to have any outcome, then Gillian Keegan has to tell us if there is new money on the table for an increase in the pay offer this year.

Bousted added that the scheduled hour-long meeting is “not sufficient for the problem that we face” and she has “never seen teachers so angry” about “12 years of neglect of state education”.

When asked whether she was hopeful that a resolution can be reached in time to avoid strike action, Bousted said: “Where there’s life there’s hope – let’s hope that the government recognise that after ignoring us for three months – and in fact longer than that – that they really need to speak to us and I hope we can resolve this.”

The NEU is balloting its members on strike action, with the ballot closing on Friday and the results due to be announced a week today. If the strike goes ahead, state schools in England and Wales could close for several days in February and March.

Kevin Courtney, the other joint general secretary of the NEU, said the union was confident that support for the strike vote would be the strongest it had seen.

Rishi Sunak has described transparency about the donations given to MPs as “really important” for democracy. He was speaking in response to a question prompted by a Sky News investigation showing that a mysterious company, with no staff or website, has donated more than £300,000 to three Labour MPs since the general election.

In their Sky report, Sam Coates and Ed Clowes report:

MPM Connect Ltd is the third-biggest donor to MPs since the last general election. The only organisations that have given more to individual politicians in that period are the trade union giants Unite and GMB.

The company has no staff or website and is registered at an office where the secretary says she has never heard of them.

The £345,217 of donations that MPM Connect has made since the end of 2019 went to three Labour politicians.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has received £184,317, former mayor of South Yorkshire Dan Jarvis £100,000 and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting £60,900.

In his pooled TV interview Sunak said “transparency is really important for the healthy functioning of democracy”. Asked if MPs should be receiving six-figure sums, he replied:

And that’s why we have a set of rules and regulations in place to provide that transparency for people. And it’s important that those rules are adhered to.

The Sky report does not suggest that any of the MPs it features have broken rules. But it does imply that the disclosure regulations are not sufficient to ensure that people have a good understanding of who is funding MPs.

Sky has broadcast its revelations to publicise a new database, Westminster Accounts, that it has set up with Tortoise Media to provide information about who funds MPs. It is based on information which is already in the public domain but which can be hard to find. Westminster Accounts is intended to make it much more accessible. There is an explanation of the project here, and you can search the database here.

Last night Steve Barclay, the health secretary, announced that the UK government wiould spend £200m paying for extra beds in care homes and other settings so that hospitals can discharge patients more quickly. This should have an impact on the A&E crisis because the shortage of hospital beds is probably the main reason why so many patients are having to wait hours in ambulances before they can be properly admitted to hospital.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, is giving a press conference in Edinburgh, and she has just announced a broadly similar policy. These are from the BBC’s James Cook.