Letters: Striking NHS workers have cause to resent government failure to fix a broken system

SIR – While the NHS workers who are planning to strike (Leading Article, December 4) may have a justifiable case for a significant pay rise, I suspect it is the daily battle against the shortages, delays and lack of resources on the front line that is the real grievance.

We have an NHS that is top-heavy with administrators on six-figure salaries while there is a shortage of beds, nurses and doctors. There is continued reporting about delays, waiting lists and their often tragic outcomes, yet there is a deafening silence from the Government regarding solutions.

When is the Government going to tackle what is probably the most significant organisation in the lives of the vast majority of the population? It is clearly not fit for purpose as it stands and requires reform from top to bottom.

A redistribution of pay from the top of the organisation to the front-line workers would be a start.

David Garnett
Northwich, Cheshire

SIR – After 40 years of working in the NHS, both as a GP and within the hospital environment, I was thinking about the single most important thing that makes me look forward to going to work every day.

The answer, in my case, is being part of a cohesive team of people who are consistently working together and who can even have some fun along the way. The ability to do this has been steadily eroded, mainly because of imposed management policies, divorced from the realities of everyday medical practice and without input from clinicians.

Organisations, whether small or large, need to consider the natural human need for well-functioning teams to prevent low morale and the constant churn of personnel.

An example where this concept might be useful, in the realm of nursing, is to return to the apprenticeship model of training.

In this model the person is immediately part of a team doing real work, and will also receive a salary for doing it. A useful consequence of this would be the instant resolution of the nursing workforce crisis, and significant a reduction in the costs of training for student nurses.

Dr Mark Vorster
Weston, Hertfordshire

SIR – Whatever the rights and wrongs of the nurses’ pay claim (report, December 8), it can surely never be right to go on strike at the risk of endangering life.

Yes, nurses have a right to strike, but they also have a responsibility to care for and save the lives of their patients. Surely that responsibility trumps any pay claim.

Mark Calvin
Tretower, Brecknockshire

SIR – Many pharmacists in hospitals, GP surgeries and on the high street have prescribed medicines, including antibiotics, to patients safely for many years, so ministers’ proposals to ask them to help during NHS strikes are not entirely new (“Pharmacies drafted in to break NHS strike”, report, December 4) .

Furthermore, new standards of education mean that by 2026 all pharmacists will be prescribers at the point of registration, heralding a sea-change in the way all pharmacists will be able to care for patients.

However, like every other healthcare profession, pharmacy teams are under severe pressure already. If the Government wants all community pharmacy teams to help ease winter pressures through a new core service, it must provide the funding and workforce plan for it to be delivered.

The role of a pharmacist is not the same as that of a doctor or a nurse, so it is hard to see how a pharmacist carrying out their professional role could be described as “strike-breaking”.

Professor Claire Anderson
President, Royal Pharmaceutical Society
London E1

Green wedges

SIR – Your Leading Article (November 27) is right: green belts need loosening.

The belts have constrained growth of our cities and large towns, and led to high-density housing developments being built within them, while other necessary homes are built outside them but suffer from transportation problems. Green belts do not always create areas of public access, and are not necessarily good farm land.

Many consider green belts to be a planning mistake, and that the concept of green wedges would serve us better. A green wedge enables “green” areas to be brought right into the centre of a town or city from different directions – like the Lea Valley into London – and allows expansion from the centre without having to jump the belt. All green belts could be transformed into wedges, with communities retaining freedom not to coalesce, yet enabling expansion to happen from the centre.

The country needs a housing policy with homes for the young near places of work and local infrastructure.

Chris Collins
Hartest, Suffolk

British youth exodus

SIR – Your article on young Britons leaving the country is absolutely true (“High taxes and ‘no future’ spark fears of a mass exodus of young Britons”, Features, November 27).

My son and his wife, both highly educated and bilingual, stated last month that they are leaving London next year for Scandinavia, their reasons being high tax, the cost of living and the impossibility of saving for a home.

Harry R Leefe
Nyon, Switzerland

Collision at Marham

SIR – Wing Commander Peter Masterman (Letters, December 4) recalls his terrifying experience of flying through the fireball of a mid-air collision of a Victor tanker aircraft and a Canberra bomber.

He says his thoughts and prayers were with the eight RAF aircrew who died that night. My own thoughts are also with them. Little comfort, but I think only seven crew died that night – I should have been the eighth.

The Victor was operating from the Tanker Training Flight (TTF) at RAF Marham and was a co-pilot training flight. As such, as a navigator radar, I was not required so only four crew flew. I was also leaving the TTF the following day on posting.

The irony is that I may have witnessed the accident. Sitting in my home in Swaffham that evening I saw a flash in the northern sky which at the time I took to be a flash of lightning.

The Victor captain was my first on the V Force and with the other aircrew who died is buried in the village church at Marham.

Les Hurst
Lytham, Lancashire

The Church puts bureaucracy before ministry

SIR – Sandra Clark (Letters, December 4) quite rightly draws attention to the fact that the Church of England is managing its own decline by cutting parish clergy in order to reduce costs. She also points out that in 2020 the Church generated some £84 million more than its expenditure.

The real issue is that the Church’s 42 dioceses have become bloated bureaucracies funded by the parishes but are accountable to no one. The diocese of Oxford has just 310 stipendiary parish clergy and yet it has more than 150 staff listed at its diocesan office. Twenty-seven of the 42 dioceses are operating at a deficit and their response is to reduce the number of parish clergy rather than reduce their own costs. This results in reduced income from the parishes, which leads to further reductions in clergy and will eventually bankrupt the dioceses as well as empty the churches.

One solution to this issue is to take away all administrative and financial functions from the dioceses and put these into a slimmed-down central body accountable to the Church Commissioners. The bishops and archdeacons, thus unburdened from administration and finance, for which they are untrained and unsuited, would focus on ministry and mission, to which they have been called. The substantial reduction in central costs would mean that more money could be spent on providing clergy in parishes, which is where the Church ministers to the people and provides support to communities in times of stress as well as times of joy.

Stephen Billyeald
Pangbourne, Berkshire

Turbine toil

SIR – In 1976, somewhat ahead of his time, my husband installed a 60 ft wind turbine (report, December 4) on our island off the coast of Connecticut in order to generate our own electricity – and, occasionally, it worked.

Regattas in full sail would stream by; my husband, incensed, would climb the tower to give the windmill a spin. I learnt to heat my Carmen rollers over the gas stove. The turbine cost over $12,000. For the same amount we could have paid for three electric lines from shore and had the advantage of being able to run the vacuum and the fridge at the same time.

I divorced my husband in 1981 and married an Englishman who had numerous plug points in his London flat.

Astrid Ronning King
Walberswick, Suffolk

Porton Down medals

SIR – It is important to clarify that medallic recognition, rather than bravery awards (report, December 3), for Porton Down veterans – who took part in sarin gas tests to help Britain become a nuclear power – would recognise “outstanding service” to this nation’s defence from chemical and biological agents. As volunteers, they did more than simply serve.

Earl Howe, the Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, wrote to my MP: “It has been the policy of successive governments that service in the Armed Forces alone does not constitute justification for medallic representation.”

Anyone aware of the Porton Down veterans’ story will know that this was more than simply serving our country. Testing on humans at Porton Down started in 1916. Porton’s records are no longer complete from the earliest days, but a best guess has the number as at least 33,000 tested since then. It is time for the policy in relation to the Porton veterans to be reassessed.

I renew my call for the special service of the Porton Down veterans to be recognised and a medallic award made for our outstanding service, which contributed to the understanding and protection of our Armed Forces and quite possibly the civil population as well, especially during the Cold War. The mass capability of the Warsaw Pact to use chemical weapons was well known. The veterans were, therefore, on the front line of building our protection and understanding against them.

Chemical weapons have been described as the “poor man’s atomic bomb”. Recent research has linked Gulf War Syndrome to the nerve agent sarin, which was used in testing at Porton.

On a plaque at the National Arboretum is the MOD-approved inscription, which ends: “What they did yesterday was done for you who read this today.”

Ian Foulkes
Chippenham, Wiltshire

Rickshaw rip-off

SIR – One Saturday recently I took a cycle rickshaw from Piccadilly Circus to Oxford Circus. The fare was £30. The Tube station was closed so I took another to Marble Arch. The fare was £180. Lesson learnt: agree the fare before boarding.

Pankaj Shah
Leicester

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