The Unite union's general secretary, Sharon Graham, accused the government of lying about the state of NHS strike negotiations and said no talks on pay were happening at any level Other unions, including Unison and the Royal College of Nursing RCN, have said the government has not made any further moves towards ending industrial action since talks began in early January.
On Sunday, Pat Cullen, head of the RCN, made a last-ditch appeal before fresh nursing strikes this week, asking the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to match offers made by the Welsh and Scottish governments, both of which have resulted in strikes being suspended.
Unite, which represents a smaller percentage of NHS staff, has not called off strikes and said that the government was putting lives at risk due to the understaffing even on days when there was no strikes.
Every single day there is a strike in the NHS, we have 130,000 vacancies. We are doing our best to try and solve this dispute, but it's going to take more than that. She said that it is going to take investment in the NHS.
Graham, speaking on BBC One s Sunday with Laura Kuensberg programme, said business secretary Grant Shapps was lying about minimum cover by ambulance workers, which she said was agreed on a trust-by- trust basis.
The government was misleading the public about the extent of the talks to resolve the dispute. She said in 30 years of negotiating, I have never seen such an abdication of responsibility in my entire life.
Rishi Sunak is the CEO of UK plc. We are trying to sit down with him and do a negotiation. It is very difficult to do a negotiation to solve a dispute like this if they won't come to the table. She said there was no conversations on pay with Rishi Sunak or Steven Barclay about this dispute in any way, shape or form. They dance round their handbag, dance round the edges, but they won't talk about pay. That is an abdication of responsibility for me. Shapps had said he was concerned that the planned strike by ambulance staff on Monday would put lives at risk because of the lack of cooperation between striking workers and emergency cover by the armed forces.
He told Sky that the situation where the Royal College of Nursing very responsibly told the NHS that this is where we are going to be striking and they are able to put the emergency cover in place.
We have been seeing a situation with the ambulance unions where they refuse to provide that information. That leaves the army, who are driving the back-ups here, in a very difficult position, a postcode lottery when it comes to having a stroke or a heart attack.