Government accused of insulting workers as ministers hold talks with health, education and rail unions – as it happened

• Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has agreed to discuss the possibility of a lump sum payment or backdating pay in order to end NHS strikes, according to multiple sources, though strikes will go ahead for nurses and ambulance staff next week. The news emerged after Barclay held talks with health unions about the strikes, while Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, and Huw Merriman, the rail minister, held similar talks with the teaching and transport unions. Rishi Sunak invited unions to the talks last week in a conciliatory gesture, but at the time the government said it was not willing to reconsider the pay offers for 2022-23 already on the table. The education talks did not seem to make much progress. (See 2.11pm.) After the health talks, one union official claimed that Barclay’s stance was an “insult”, and some other unions were very negative in public. But in private they were more positive, and Barclay has opened up the prospect of health workers getting some sort of increase in the payment on offer for the current financial year. After his talks at the Department for Transport, the RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said almost nothing to reporters, suggesting that substantial negotiations are ongoing.

• England is suffering its worst flu season for a decade, Barclary has said.

• Scottish hospitals will be allowed to cancel non-urgent operations and move patients into care homes to help tackle “exceptional and severe” pressures on the NHS, Nicola Sturgeon has announced.

• Britain is considering supplying a handful of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, the first time a western country has indicated it may supply its homemade heavy armour to Kyiv in the war against Russia, the Guardian reports.

• The former Tory minister Claire Perry has quit the party and is now publicly praising Keir Starmer, the Times’ Henry Zeffman reports.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, is still responding to questions in the Commons on his statement, and generally Tory MPs have not been critical. But Sir Edward Leigh asked a withering question, saying that while Labour had a long-term plan for the NHS, the Tories didn’t. He said:

They also have Covid and flu in France or Germany or Italy or Sweden or Holland. And winter after winter they cope far better because they have much more integrated social insurance systems.

What is our long-term plan? We can’t leave the Labour party to have a long-term plan and we don’t. How are we going to reform this centrally controlled construct so the people of my age pay taxes all their life and their only right is enjoying the back of a two-year queue – what is his plan?

In response, Barclay said that the government already had an elective recovery plan and that it was working on a workforce plan. He suggested that the government’s performance than Labour-run Wales’s. And he insisted other European countries had similar problems too. He said:

Actually in France, in Germany, in Canada, in many other countries this massive spike in flu and Covid pressure combined with the pressures from the pandemic has placed similar strains on other healthcare systems.

Huw Merriman, the rail minister, said his meeting with the RMT and train operators today about resolving the rail strike was “constructive”. He said:

Today’s meeting with RMT representatives and employers was constructive; we discussed the challenges facing the rail industry and the best ways to address them.

Passengers, businesses and those who value our railway want an end to these disruptive strikes, so the negotiating parties should now resume intensive talks to find a resolution.

Further talks are planned for later this week. (See 4.37pm.)

The UK and the EU have reached an agreement on access to a new British database providing real time information on goods going from the Great Britain to Northern Ireland in the first sign of progress in Brexit talks over the controversial Brexit protocol for the region.

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, and Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice president, described a meeting in London today as “cordial and constructive” in a joint statement.

They said the agreement was a “critical prerequisite to building trust and providing assurance” and “provided a new basis for EU-UK discussions”.

The move is significant given the collapse in relations between both sides while Boris Johnson was in power.

Talks aimed at finding a solution over the Northern Ireland protocol re-opened in September following the appointment of Liz Truss as prime minister and continued when Rishi Sunak succeeded her in Downing Street.

Today’s meeting was the second between Cleverly and Šefčovič in the past month with both sides aiming to resolve the dispute by 10 April, the anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday agreement. The statement said:

They agreed that while a range of critical issues need to be resolved to find a way forward, an agreement was reached today on the way forward regarding the specific question of the EU’s access to UK IT systems.

Tomorrow Šefčovič is due to hold talks in Brussels with Micheál Martin, the Irish foreign minister, in Brussels.

In a post on Twitter, Šefčovič said the deal today would provide “a new basis” for the talks on the protocol.

In his own tweet Cleverly said the agreement was a “positive step”.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, is making a statement to MPs about the winter pressures facing the NHS. He started by accepting that conditions in A&E in recent weeks have “not been acceptable”. He said:

I regret the experience for some patients and staff in emergency care has not been acceptable in recent weeks.

Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has agreed to discuss the possibility of a lump sum payment or backdating pay in order to end NHS strikes, according to multiple sources, though strikes will go ahead for nurses and ambulance staff next week.

Though health unions publicly attacked the talks as disappointing, both union and government sources acknowledged a significant change in approach and that the government would be prepared to ease the pain staff were experiencing because of the cost of living.

Our full story on this is here.

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), expressed frustration at the lack of progress in union leaders’ meeting with the education secretary. He said:

The meeting was constructive but largely unsatisfactory in that our concerns over the long-term erosion of teacher pay and conditions, the inadequacy of this year’s pay award, and the ongoing teacher recruitment and retention crisis, remain unresolved.

He said the education secretary had promised to look at union submissions to the pay review body for next year’s school teacher pay award, but no progress had been made on this year’s below-inflation award. He went on:

We cannot go on like this. The government missed its target for recruiting trainee secondary teachers by 40% this year, and nearly a third of teachers leave the profession within five years of qualifying.

It is increasingly difficult for schools to be able to put teachers in front of classes. Pay and conditions must be improved together with sufficient funding for schools to be able to afford these costs.

We are expecting further talks to take place in the near future, and we sincerely hope that these issues can be resolved through discussion rather than industrial action. However, these talks must lead to a positive outcome.

ASCL is currently considering a formal ballot for strike action, after 54% of eligible members voted in an indicative ballot, with 69% in favour of moving to a formal ballot on strike action over pay and 74% backing a formal ballot on action short of a strike.

Scottish hospitals will be allowed to cancel non-urgent operations and move patients into care homes to help tackle “exceptional and severe” pressures on the NHS, Nicola Sturgeon has announced.

The first minister said Scotland’s hospitals were “almost completely full” as she unveiled a package of emergency measures to help relieve pressure on emergency rooms and allow hospitals to focus on critical care.

Sturgeon admitted, however, she was pessimistic about the chances of averting a strike by Scottish nurses and midwives later this month, in an ongoing dispute over a pay settlement imposed on NHS staff in December.

The Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives are expected to announce the first strikes in their history shortly, but Sturgeon said her government had no more money to offer them. She said:

We have no more money this year. I think this will be a very, very hard thing to achieve but I am very, very clear about the priority I attach to avoiding industrial action.

She said Scottish NHS staff had been given 7.5% on average, compared to 4.5% in England and Wales, but indicated a fresh offer to improve terms and conditions could be made, with talks on next year’s pay due to start soon.

At a media briefing in Edinburgh, the first minister said:

We anticipated and planned for this winter to be difficult but even so, the current pressures are exceptional and severe.

The recent surge in Covid cases, a mushrooming in influenza hospitalisations and an increase in Strep A infections had made the picture far worse; in some cases hospital staff were falling ill, exacerbating these problems.

Among a package of measures, Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf, the Scottish health secretary, said:

• NHS boards will be allowed to cancel non-essential operations to prioritise life-saving care and redeploy staff to areas under the greatest pressure.

• Doctors surgeries will in some areas open on Saturdays to divert people from hospitals.

• Staffing at the helpline NHS24 will be increased.

Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, told reporters that he was “neither more nor less” hopeful about the prospects of a resolution to the rail dispute following his talks today with Huw Merriman, the rail minister. He said that there would be further talks later this week.

Despite being pressed by several journalists, the normally loquacious Lynch refused to say any more.

That suggests there has been some movement in the negotiations. There has been speculation about a resolution to the rail dispute coming soon, and so the rail talks may turn out to be the most successful of the three sets of union-ministerial talks taking place today.

Leaders of the National Education Union said there had been “no concrete progress” after their meeting with Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, 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.

UPDATE: This is from my colleague Pippa Crerar.

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.

Rishi Sunak also insisted in his pooled TV interview that the government was focused on “the people’s priorities”. Referring to the promises he announced last week, he

What the government is getting on with is delivering on the people’s priorities. I set out five priorities, five promises I wanted to make to the country – that’s to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, reduce waiting lists, and stop the boats. That’s squarely what everyone in government is focused on.

Sunak also used this shorthand account of his promises on Twitter last week, and in his ConservativeHome article, and that means that is now the settled summary of what he is pledging. It is significant because a promise to legislate with the intention of stopping small boat Channel crossings has become a commitment to “stop the boats”.

While experts believe Sunak can achieve the first four quite easily, very few commentators believe he will “stop the boats”.

(Perhaps he is assuming that the public will view the tests as a GSCE exam, and that four out of five will qualify as a good pass.)

In his pooled broadcast interview Rishi Sunak was asked if he accepted that the talks happening today would not be able to avert the nurses’ strike scheduled for next week. He sidestepped the question, and just said that it was good that the talks were happening.

Earlier Patricia Marquis, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing, said that even though the talks were taking place, it was “unlikely” that they would result in the strike would be called off. (See 10.19am.)

BBC News is broadcasting an interview with Rishi Sunak.

Asked if the government is proposing a one-off payment to nurses, Sunak does not deny that. “You would not expect me to comment on specifics,” he says.

He says the government wants to be reasonable. It is important to keep talking.

Q: What did you mean yesterday when you said the pay talks would cover pay for this year? (It was not clear if Sunak was talking about pay settlement for the 2023-24 financial year, or the 2022-23 financial year.)

Sunak sidesteps the question.

It was my colleague Pippa Crerar who reported overnight that the government was considering a one-off payment for nurses as a means of ending the strike.

I will post more from the Sunak interview shortly.

In her Sky News interview Patricia Marquis, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said she was alarmed by suggestions from government that future pay increases for nurses could be linked to efficiency reforms. She said that made her “very, very worried”. She explained:

It shows a level of misunderstanding of the situation the NHS and nursing is in at the moment.

There aren’t enough staff to deliver the care that needs to be delivered and there isn’t enough funding in the NHS.

Of course, there’s always some sort of efficiencies that can be made but it really does sound like what they’re trying to do is get … the NHS to fund its own pay award and we don’t think that’s possible. We really think this needs to be extra money that is clearly earmarked for for nursing pay.

Patricia Marquis, director for England at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), told Sky News this morning that she thought it was “unlikely” that the talks with the government taking place today would lead to the planned nurses’s strike for later this month being called off.

Asked about the chances of the strike being called off, she told Sky News:

At the moment, it feels unlikely but we’ll see what today brings in those conversations with Steve Barclay.

If there are chinks of hope, if there are further meetings, then I and my colleagues will all maintain optimism that we can get a resolution without nurses having to be on the picket lines again later this month.

Asked if she would be the chances of a resolution at 50/50, she replied:

I don’t think it is 50/50, but there is some hope and we maintain that hope.

A potential government offer of a one-off payment to teachers is unlikely to be enough to prevent upcoming strikes in England and Wales, Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said this morning. My colleague Peter Walker has the story here.

Good morning. There are various meetings taking place today between ministers and union leaders representing workers in health, education and the rail industry after Rishi Sunak called last week for both sides to get around the table. This is quite a shift from the pre-Christmas position when ministers insisted it was up to management negotiators to take the lead in talks with unions. At the end of last week it was not clear whether this was mainly a presentational ploy (Sunak wants the government to be seen as “reasonable’”), or whether significant concessions might be in the pipeline, but yesterday, as my colleague Pippa Crerar reports, Sunak hinted it was the latter in his start-of-year interview with Laura Kuenssberg.

But it is quite possible that the strike crisis could get worse before it gets better. The British Medical Association is from today balloting 45,000 junior doctors in England on strike action and, if they vote in favour, a 72-hour strike is planned from March. This morning Dr Emma Runswick, the BMA’s deputy chair, told Sky News that the chances of a strike were “very high”. She explained:

[Health secretary] Steve Barclay’s planning to meet with us on Wednesday but only to discuss a very narrow set of things. He’s talking about the evidence that the government will submit to the pay review body. Unfortunately, they’ve already submitted their remit letter to the pay review body telling us and them that we only should receive 2% next year.

So, that’s another massive pay cut after we’ve had a pay cut this year, and for the previous 15 years. Again, another pay cut on top of the quarter pay cut we’ve already received, so I’m not optimistic … about the meetings, though we will go and we will negotiate if that is an available option to us.

Asked to confirm junior doctors were looking for a 26% pay rise, Runswick said:

We’re asking for the reversal of that pay cut [over the last 15 years]. So, mathematically, it might even be more and if we have another pay cut this year, it’ll be more again. So, we’re only asking for what we’ve had cut from us back.

Runswick also said she had a colleague who had gone to work in Australia where “she’s doing fewer hours than I am and she’s earning 1.7 times as much”.

We should be hearing again from Sunak this morning. Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a health-related visit in Yorkshire.

11am: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a press conference on the situation in the NHS.

11.30pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Lunchtime: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, hold a meeting at Lancaster House with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president who is in charge of Brexit-related negotiations on behalf of the EU.

After 3.30pm: Steve Barclay, the health secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about extra funding for social care beds. A Treasury minister is also expected to make a statement about the extension of the energy support package for businesses.

Also today, health, education and transport ministers are holding talks with unions about what might resolve the strikes.

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