Wells, the minister, Pengelly the permanent secretary and Watts the health board dhair have all failed their duty of care to the people of Northern Ireland. They are not fit to be in charge of our health service.
As a last ac,t the previous health minister refused to sign off the health budget on the grounds that it would put patients at risk. He was sacked and patients are now at risk.
There is no such crisis of conscience for his successor and those at the top of the health bureaucracy.
In the land of golden handshakes and pension parachutes, their only concern is to balance the books no matter what the cost in personal suffering.
Today, Valerie Watts has announced a catalogue of cuts and closures but she has not told the whole truth.
At its October board meeting the health care board announced that all those patients who were scheduled for treatment in the private sector, rather than being rescheduled for NHS treatment have now been “paused”.
This means that by April, over 4,000 patients in need of operations will have been paused. Some of them will not make it to April. This is not only a failure of duty of care it amounts to negligence.
Earlier this month, the permanent secretary Richard Pengelly summoned the Valerie Watts to Stormont and warned her that she must balance the books. She should have publicly challenged him but did not.
UNISON then met with him and asked him to issue an instruction to all chief executives to exercise their duty of care. He has clearly refused.
If the current political and public sector institutions cannot make the health of the people a number one priority then they have failed us all and no amount of talks about talks will put this right.
UNISON was forced to take industrial action over cuts in 2011. We will now do so again. This time we call for a mass mobilisation of civil society to stand with us to protect health and social care and our most vulnerable people.