Nurses picket as London faces new two-day strike

Royal College of Nursing members will come from 55 hospital trusts across England, including London, within 48 hours until Friday. They announced two more strikes on February 6 and 7 in a “cost of living” dispute.

Downing Street condemned the “significant violations” that would trigger widespread strikes.

The RCN is calling for a pay rise of 5 per cent above inflation, although it has said it will accept a lower offer.

Inflation was 7.5 percent when the figure was submitted to the independent pay review body in March.

But inflation has risen sharply since then, with RPI standing at 14.2 per cent in September.

RCN chief executive Pat Cullen said: “We are doing this in a desperate bid to get him and ministers to save the NHS.”

There are more than 130,000 vacancies across the NHS, leaving patient care suffering “like never before”.

London Bus Transport workers in Abellio will also be on strike on Thursday.

Piling additional pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the machinists of Aslef and RMT unions as well as university staff are the latest to confirm they will take action on February 1, joining teachers from the National Education Union in England and Wales and around 100,000 civil servants in the PCS.

The action coincides with protests by the Congress of Trade Unions against government legislation aimed at ensuring minimum staffing levels are maintained during strikes at key businesses.

A Sunac official said: “We have no doubt that this strike, some of which will take place on the same day or days, will cause serious disruption to the public – whether children’s education is disrupted or people trying to go about their daily lives in the road.

“We do not believe this is the right course of action, we continue to call on the unions to walk away from the pickets and continue discussions.”

A series of Cobra emergency committee meetings have already been held to discuss the response strikesand more are expected ahead of the February 1 event.

“We’ve seen that we’ve been able to significantly mitigate some of the problems that would otherwise have arisen from some of these strikes,” the prime minister’s spokesman said.