Winter pressures, NHS strikes, and what our taxes are for

As the year draws to a close, many of us are holding two realities at once: seasonal connection, and the starkness of a country under strain.

This December, that strain is especially visible in the NHS. Resident doctors in England are now taking strike action (beginning at 7am on Wednesday 17 December and due to run until 7am on Monday 22 December), at the same time as NHS leaders warn of intense winter pressures as flu admissions rise.

For patients, this can mean delays, cancellations, and anxious uncertainty. For staff, it reflects something deeper: a system that repeatedly reaches crisis point, where people feel they have no other route to be heard.

Whether or not someone agrees with strike action, it should be possible to hold two truths at once: patients deserve safe, timely care, and NHS workers deserve humane conditions and fair treatment, so the service can function safely.

That’s why it matters when politicians dismiss strike action as “irresponsible”. It invites a question Conscience always comes back to:

What is truly irresponsible — and who pays the price for political priorities?

Responsibility is more than a soundbite

“Responsibility” is often used to shut down debate. Of course it is responsible to worry about disruption and patient safety. But it is also responsible to ask why the NHS repeatedly enters winter with staffing gaps, exhausted teams, and too little resilience to cope with predictable surges.

Industrial action doesn’t begin on the first day of a strike. It begins when chronic understaffing, burnout, blocked training pathways, and retention problems become normalised — and when staff conclude there is no credible plan to fix them. A health system is not protected by rhetoric. It is protected by decisions that retain staff, build capacity, and make safe care the baseline.

What taxes reveal about what we value

Conscience exists because a basic truth is too often ignored:

Real security is human security.

It is being able to access healthcare when you are ill. It is public health capacity that prevents suffering, not just responds to emergencies. It is social care that stops people falling into crisis. And it is peacebuilding that reduces the drivers of conflict, displacement, and long-term harm.

Against that standard, our national priorities deserve scrutiny. Time and again, we are told there is “no money” for care — yet commitments to rising military spending are treated as inevitable. The debate is rarely framed as “affordable” versus “unaffordable”; it becomes “unavoidable” versus “optional”.

This is not simply an argument about numbers. It is an argument about values. Public money is never neutral: it signals what a society chooses to protect.

Refusing the false choice

In moments like this, the public debate often offers a false choice: patients or doctors; care or responsibility; public services or “security”.

Conscience refuses that framing. The NHS cannot be protected without protecting its workforce — and a country cannot be made safer by undermining the health and wellbeing of its people. If we want security that lasts, it must be built through care, prevention, resilience, and peace — not through ever-greater preparation for war.

What Conscience is calling for

At times of visible strain, Conscience’s message is not an abstract moral preference. It is a practical case for a different set of priorities.

We campaign for:

• A progressive shift in UK public spending away from war and preparation for war, and towards peacebuilding.

• The legal right for those with a conscientious objection to war to have the military portion of their taxes redirected to peacebuilding.

When the NHS is under pressure, this matters because money is capacity: staffing levels, training places, retention, and the resilience to manage crises without lurching from emergency to emergency. If we can plan long-term commitments in some areas, we can plan for safe staffing and properly resourced health services as a permanent commitment to life.

A seasonal wish — and a clear-eyed ask

We send warm seasonal wishes to everyone affected by these pressures: patients waiting for care, staff working under intense strain, and families worrying about what happens next.

And we ask, gently but firmly: let’s refuse the story that there is no alternative.

There is always an alternative. The question is whether we have the courage to choose it.

If you believe taxes should be used to protect life and build peace — not pay for war — please support Conscience, share our work, and help make the case for human security.