Rishi Sunak has been accused of going “missing” as a furious war of words erupted over the ongoing NHS strikes.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham accused the prime minister of “an abdication of leadership” as ambulance workers followed nurses in taking to the picket lines.
Her comments came after health secretary Steve Barclay accused the trade unions of making a “conscious choice” to “inflict harm” on patients.
Both the PM and Barclay have insisted that they will not make an improved pay offer to bring an end to the industrial action.
Speaking on a picket line in Coventry, Sharon Graham said: “Every time the health secretary speaks I’ve got my head in my hands because I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about.
“What the government needs to do is come to the table and negotiate. We’ve been asking them to do this for weeks and weeks and weeks.”
Graham also denied government claims that ambulance workers have failed to give guarantees that they will provide emergency cover when they are on strike, thereby putting the public at risk.
She said: “This is squarely at the door of the government. I don’t know where Rishi Sunak is. Where is he? He seems to be missing.
“He needs to come to the table and he needs to negotiate. In 25 years of negotiations that I’ve been doing, I have never seen such an abdication of leadership as I have with this prime minister.
“He needs to get to the table, do the negotiations so these people get their pay rise and they can go back to work.”
On BBC Breakfast , Barclay denied that his language was “ramping up this current atmosphere”.
He said: “No, it reflects the very different action we’ve seen from these trade unions – the GMB, Unite and Unison – compared to what we saw from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), where we agreed national exemptions in terms of what would be covered by the RCN, whereas the three unions striking today have refused to work with us on a national level.”
But Rachel Harrison, the GMB’s national secretary, accused the minister of “insulting” ambulance workers.
She said: “They have not taken the decision to take strike action lightly.
“They feel they have been forced into this position because year after year the government has failed to listen to them.”
Asked if there would be harm to patients as a result of the walkout, Harrison said: “The sad reality is that patients are being harmed every single day, and that’s when we’re not on strike.”