Minister reassures on prescriptions

The minister was booed and heckled at Unison's Brighton conference when he first began to try and defend Government policies on the NHS which have threatened to spark a summer strikes

Unison is threatening industrial action which could hit the health service this summer as workers are angry that the Government are staggering a 2.5% pay rise for health workers which will reduce the value of the award to 1.9%.

However Mr Burnham's announcement over prescriptions was met warmly by delegates. Unison had feared that the entire service could be switched offshore with the loss of up to 2,500 jobs in centres including Newcastle upon Tyne, Yorkshire and Humberside. Mr Burnham said there was further work needed to improve the service but he told delegates that jobs would not be outsourced.

The minister maintained that the NHS was a better service than when Labour came to power in 1997, although he acknowledged that staff had faced a "difficult time" over the past year. He said: "We know we have asked a lot of NHS staff in the last 12 to 18 months to get the NHS back to financial balance."

Mr Burnham said the Government's aim in 1997 was to turn around the public perception of the NHS and make it into the "very best" public service by investing in new buildings, increasing the workforce and cutting waiting lists.

Mr Burnham said he did not want to see health workers "collapsing over the finishing line" as they struggled to meet Government targets.

Visitors sitting in the public gallery of the hall heckled the minister within minutes of him starting to speak and were warned by the conference chairman that they would be told to leave if they did not stop disrupting the speech.

Karen Jennings, Unison's head of health, said later that delegates were very pleased at the Government's decision not to outsource work from the prescriptions and pricing department.

She acknowledged that Mr Burnham made little reference to pay and believed ministers were now waiting to see if workers were balloted. Mrs Jennings said she believed there would be a strike ballot among hundreds of thousands of health workers within the next eight weeks.