Victoria Macdonald , Health and Social Care Editor

Unions representing tens of thousands of NHS workers are considering an invitation from the government to enter formal pay talks ahead of more strikes next week.

In the last few hours, nurses have agreed to pause next week’s 48-hour strike in England and re-start talks with the government. 

Thousands of junior doctors have voted to go on strike for 72 hours next month in a dispute over pay.

On the face of it, the improved monthly figures for ambulance and Accident and Emergency waiting times suggest that the NHS in England is on the mend.

Today the NHS in England saw its biggest ever walkout, with nurses and ambulance staff from the Unite, RCN and GMB unions on strike on the same day for the first time.

The government’s two-year plan to deal with the crisis in emergency NHS care is pretty straightforward. 

Last week we reported from all the home nations on the scale of the crisis facing the NHS. 

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was terrifying that people could ring 999 and not be confident they would get the healthcare they need from the NHS. 

Patients in England are seeing the worst ambulance response times and longest A&E waits on record – while almost 55,000 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E last month, a sharp increase on the month before.

Strikes by ambulance workers were singled out today by Grant Shapps as one of the driving factors behind the government’s decision to bring forward this legislation, and tomorrow around 25,000 of them across England and Wales will again walk out over pay.

The crisis in Britain’s healthcare system has put huge pressure on the NHS, and the winter of discontent in the UK is set to continue. 

The Prime Minister has acknowledged that seeing ambulances queuing outside hospitals made people ‘understandably anxious’ and one of those five pledges he made earlier today was to tackle NHS waiting lists. 

The mounting pressures on the NHS have become an “unprecedented challenge”, Downing Street has admitted.

The pressure on the NHS is intolerable and unsustainable according to medics amid warnings that as many as 500 people could be dying weekly because of delays in emergency care. 

Now, mental health has become a major concern in this country, exacerbated by the pandemic but the first major reform of the 1983 Mental Health Act is only now going through parliament.