Ministers and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) are holding talks in a bid to bring an end to the pay dispute that saw nurses take strike action for the first time in the union’s history.

The fact that the RCN has halted next week's 48-hour strike in England shows that there is a will on the part of the union to bring an end to industrial action.

And Department of Health and Social Care officials meeting with representatives of junior doctors is also a positive step after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) voted to take strike action.

A Royal College of Nursing picket line as staff strike outside a hospital.

The Government isn’t taking on obdurate, militant unions. Instead, it is negotiating with representatives of those people that the public stood at their doorstep to applaud every Thursday during the height of the pandemic.

Yet today many of them find themselves reliant on food banks. Even with sky-high inflation, a developed nation like Britain should be able to look after those that look after the most vulnerable amongst us.

But while talks are a positive sign, the Government must enter them in good faith and take negotiations seriously.

Too often the Department of Health and Social Care has been found wanting over the crisis in the NHS this winter and it is patients who suffer the consequences.

Negotiations with healthcare unions welcome but Government needs to act in good faith - The Yorkshire Post says