Ben Lowry: There are arguments against strikes but we don’t hear them

Politicians in the party that ended the chronic industrial action that was widely seen to have damaged the 1970s British economy now will barely say a word against the proliferation of workplace disputes.

The one-sided, subtly supportive coverage of the strikes got even worse since this week as the walkouts actually happened.

On BBC Sunday Politics at the weekend and then on radio, on the Nolan Show on Monday, I noted that it was left to me, a commentator, to query what is happening.

Where are the business leaders? The economists? The patients groups? Above all, where are the politicians? I have not heard one of the 90 MLAs challenge the strikes

The arguments in favour of a better deal for nurses are strong, given the nursing shortage. But that shortage is a complex problem that is being experienced even by rich countries such a Germany.

The arguments against striking are also strong, and it is a worrying reflection on our democracy that seemingly no-one feels able to articulate them. I think they fear that such a critique will be distorted as an attack on nurses.

My admiration for nurses and carers only grew this year, when my parents died. Both needed care at home, for which there is a grave shortage (we struggled to get mum and dad the help they needed). When their time came to go into hospital, the ambulance staff were outstanding, as were the nurses and doctors who tended to them in the Ulster (a hospital that now has excellent facilities).

I think in particular of the carers who came to my parents’ home, and how modestly rewarded they are. Among them were two admirable girls, still at school, who wanted to be carers so much that they were already doing it part-time while pupils.

As a society we badly under-value something as vital as care. Paying such carers more will cost the country money, and if we need savings I can think of white collar jobs that could take a trim. But our admiration for nurses does not mean that withholding labour in such a frontline role should go unquestioned.

The wider arguments include the fact that there is a huge national debt after the UK’s generous furlough scheme.

Also that high pay deals will embed inflation at 10%+, causing economic instability and wiping out savings (savers have lost money in real terms for 15 years yet few speak for them – is it because saving is seen to be prudent, boring and maybe even selfish?).

There is evidence that inflation might be falling back as many experts said it would (although having just bought oil at over £1 a litre I accept that any easing in prices is so far only minor).

Other factors are rarely raised when talking about the pay of nurses and other state employees, such as pensions. I sometimes think that if private workers knew how generous public sector pensions are, despite modest reforms of them, there might be social disorder, given the disparity.

A journalist on the regional press will typically when qualified earn around £27,000. They will reach the average pay of a nurse, around £31,000, only if they take on extra editorial duties. If that journalist on £27k is in a secure job by 25 (only a small minority are) and puts 6% of their income into a pension plan with employer putting in the same, will by age 65 have a fund of perhaps £130k. With good growth maybe £200k. To get the sort of inflation-proofed annuities available in the public sector they might get £6k pa.

In reality few such private workers will have that job security and rafts of them will retire on public pensions of £3k or so, and will depend on the state pension. If they knew how easily people on equivalent public sector salaries in the public sector will, after similar service and pension contribution, be getting £13k+ inflation-linked there would be anger that they, the private worker, is paying taxes that fund far more generous pensions.

Yet there is no such resentment because pensions are hard to grasp.

These are among the arguments to be made that public sector employees are often not as badly treated as people might think.

• Incidentally, BBC NI Newsline on Wednesday led with an imbalanced report on NHS and imminent nurses strike.

This is why I think it was so imbalanced:

First the premise of the report.

The entire, main evening news programme began with a report on how a Royal College of Nursing leader described her horror at the conditions at the Royal’s accident and emergency department.

But this was obviously inappropriate: the RCN was going out on strike the next day. Thus any story relating to the RCN was the strike and any RCN leader on the news at that time should principally (again, this is obvious) have been asked about the strike and why they were doing it, and grilled persistently on the harm that such action might do.But instead the BBC used Rita Devlin of the RCN to comment on its own previous visit to that emergency department, and made her reaction to that visit their main story.

Thus Ms Devlin, instead of answering for her own strike action, was put in the role of critic – criticising the state of the NHS.

She was at a later point asked by the BBC NI health correspondent Marie-Louise Connolly about the idea that the strike was abandoning patients, but this question – while important – was on its own utterly insufficient to bring balance to the report. Ms Devlin had already by then been allowed to speak at length about the A&E problem.

I am not saying that an RCN leader’s assessment of such a problem in A&E is not of interest. Of course it is of interest, as is those of other health leaders. I am challenging the decision to present her in the role of critic of NHS shortcomings on the eve of an RCN strike.

Ms Devlin then said that she supported the strike more than ever after going to the Royal A&E and that the strike was as much about political leadership and about the NHS as it is about pay. That claim was allowed to sit unchallenged.

But if Ms Devlin believes that, then an obvious follow-on question is this: if the government goes halfway to meeting the strike demands, in that it recruits more staff but gives no-one extra pay, will you support calling off the strike as a compromise?

In other words, are nurses prepared to forgo their pay demand if sufficient money is invested in alleviate health pressures?

Incidentally, BBC NI has previously reported from hospital units under pressure, which is reasonable exercise but can also potentially turn into the breathless reportage of symptoms.

We know the NHS is in crisis. But we need to know the reasons it is so.

The report then interviewed three members of the public who expressed their disgust at such problems in the health service.

The report then included a clip of Mark Dayan from the Nuffield Trust think tank talking about the lack of leadership at the moment (in the absence of a Stormont executive). While he said that this lack of accountability, he also – tellingly – said that this meant that there was no-one to tell the public that things might get better if we take difficult decisions around health provision in NI.

But very few viewers will realise that this was in fact in large part a criticism of a local political failure to take bold decisions on health, which is at the heart of the current crisis. They will have thought it was a current criticism of the lack of a political assembly.

The BBC NI Newsline report seemed clearly to be saying that the lack of ministers is a part of the current crisis in the NHS. At the beginning of the programme, the report was introduced with a description of how Ms Devlin found the situation in the Royal A&E “shocking” and a reflection of the fact that “no-one appeared to be in charge”.

Of course in a normal parliament the lack of political leadership would be a problem but in the case of Stormont there is some evidence of the very opposite: that the executive, for almost all of its existence, has for 20 years ducked the health reforms demanded by multiple expert reports, and we have a less efficient health service as a result.

Ms Connolly did say that the things would not be perfect if Stormont was in place. But to concede that point is not the same as addressing and examining the possibility that things are actually worse because Stormont has been in charge for so long, and has refused politically to follow clear expert advice over 20 years.

The Newsline report then said it had asked the NI Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris for his view on the problems, and the relevant permanent secretary is running health Peter May, and the head of the Belfast Health Trust Cathy Jack.

But while Mr Heaton-Harris is a political leader, the other two are not.

Above all, Stormont politicians – almost all of whom support the strikes – should be asked about the health crisis that they have been so central in creating in their political refusal to take hard decisions. Yet many of them are sanctimonious in their criticisms of the NHS, blaming alleged cuts rather than their own refusal to embrace efficiencies at a time of mammoth UK fundin for health.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor

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