Nursing strike to be cut short after legal challenge

Members of the Royal College of Nursing were due to stage 48-hour walkout from 8pm on Sunday

Nurses picket outside the London court where the government brought the challenge over their planned strike action. AP

A strike by nurses will be cut by a day following a legal challenge by the government.

Members of the Royal College of Nursing, Britain’s biggest nursing union, were set to stage a 48-hour walkout from 8pm on Sunday, returning to work on Tuesday evening.

But a High Court judge has ruled the action – which will involve staff in emergency departments, intensive care and cancer care units for the first time – must now end on Bank Holiday Monday.

The judge said the union's mandate for industrial action would have expired by Tuesday, because a ballot of RCN members closed on November 2, 2022, at noon, and a vote to strike is only valid for six months.

NHS Employers said the discrepancy could invalidate the entire strike, but the government only contested the part that fell on May 2. The RCN did not send lawyers to the hearing.

Judge Thomas Linden ruled on Thursday that the RCN's mandate for industrial action ended at midnight on May 1, meaning its planned strike the following day would be unlawful.

The Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay welcomed the ruling, saying the government could not stand by and let "plainly unlawful strike action" to go ahead.

"Both the NHS and my team tried to resolve this without resorting to legal action, but unfortunately, following a request from NHS Employers, we took this step with regret to protect nurses by ensuring they are not asked to take part in an unlawful strike.

“We welcome the decision of the High Court that the Royal College of Nursing’s planned strike on 2 May is illegal.

“The government wants to continue working constructively with the Royal College of Nursing, as was the case when we agreed the pay offer that was endorsed by their leadership.

"We now call on them to do the right thing by patients and agree derogations for their strike action on 30 May and 1 April.”

RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen, speaking outside court before the hearing, said it was a “sad day”.

“Steve Barclay may get a legal win today, but what he has done is he has lost the public and he has certainly lost nursing, so it is a short-term gain,” she said.

She added: "I think if you were to stop any member of public up and down England today, they would say he has got this so, so wrong, to actually push the full weight of the court system on nurses to try and silence them.

"What he should be doing today is getting into a negotiating room with me, not a courtroom, and saying 'what can we do to sort out the nursing crisis, fill the tens of thousands of vacant posts, so that patients get a decent service in this country, and that our nursing staff can be retained in the NHS?'."

Ms Cullen said the government had taken "the most trusted profession through the courts".

"And what a day for nursing. What a day for patients. And what an indictment on this government to do this to the very people that have held this NHS together, not just through the pandemic, but an NHS that has been run into the ground and in crisis, caused by this government."

Downing Street said it was "regrettable" that the government had to take legal action against the RCN.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman told reporters: "I think, firstly, it is obviously regrettable that it had to come to court action in the first instance.

"The government never wanted to take this to court. We did indeed try every possible way to avoid a court case.

"The NHS presented the RCN with clear legal evidence that their planned strike for May 2 was unlawful. We asked them to call it off. The RCN refused. That's why the NHS asked the government to intervene and seek the view of the court.

UK nurses strike again as patients warned of 'inevitable' impact - in pictures

"Late yesterday, Steve Barclay wrote the RCN, to Pat Cullen again, and asked them to call off their final day of the strike given we were confident that it was not legal, they refused again."

RCN announced the upcoming action after members voted to reject the government's latest pay deal of 5 per cent for 2023-24 and a one-off lump sum.

The offer was accepted by Unison staff. Unite and the GMB trade union will announce the result of their ballots on the same deal within days.

Earlier this month, the leader of RCN warned members could stage regular strikes until December over the long-running pay wrangle.

Ms Cullen reiterated the threat on Thursday, saying it was with a "heavy heart" that strike action could continue in the lead-up to Christmas.

"If Steve Barclay continues to stay in the tunnel that he's in, we will end up with strike action for the next six months because nursing staff are not going to step back now," she said.