MINISTERS have “gone from clapping nurses to slapping court orders on them,” the leader of 300,000 nurses said after a High Court ruling against one day’s strike action next week.

Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary Pat Cullen warned that after the “darkest day” in the protracted pay dispute, strike action could continue until Christmas after a new ballot takes place next month.

The government resorted to the courts to prevent a strike by nurses on Tuesday May 2 on a technicality. 

The court said a second day of 48-hours of strike action by members of the RCN next week will overrun the six-month period during which strikes can lawfully take place following a ballot by union members.

The strike on May 2 is being cancelled by the RCN after the ruling yesterday that it would be unlawful.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay, who has become the latest Tory frontbencher to face bullying claims towards civil servants, welcomed the court ruling.

Ms Cullen said the court action was “an indictment on this government” which had run the NHS “into the ground and in crisis.”

And she said Mr Barclay had “stood personally and clapped for nurses on steps” during the pandemic, “and now you slap the court order on them. Shocking.

“Now he decides that the way to pay those nurses back is to use patients’ money, public money, to drag them through the courts, and that is not the way to run this country.”

She said the RCN will “immediately” hold another ballot to authorise a further six months of strike action.

Using the courts to attack nurses will massively increase the bitterness they feel towards and government — and will further anger the public who have consistently supported the nurses, she warned.

“The full weight of government gave ministers this victory over nursing staff. 

“It is the darkest day of this dispute so far — the government taking its own nurses through the courts in bitterness at their simple expectation of a better pay deal.”

But she said nurses “will be angered but not crushed” by the court ruling.

“It may even make them more determined to vote in next month’s re-ballot for a further six months of action,” she said, adding the RCN should have been “in the negotiating room, not the courtroom today.”

She accused the government of having “lost the nurses and lost the public.”

“They’ve taken the most trusted profession through the courts, by the least trusted people.”

She said nurses would continue to fight for their patients — including more than seven million on waiting lists — and apologised to them.

“We’re sorry for those 7.2 million people-plus that are sitting on waiting lists.

“We’re sorry that we haven’t been able to fill the tens of thousands of vacant posts by getting this government into a room and negotiating properly and decently for nursing.

“That’s what our aim is, to address those waiting lists to make sure people get a decent NHS in this country and they just continue to crumble under this government.

“But the most important thing is that the public trust our nursing staff. 

“The public have stood behind our nursing staff and the way that our nursing staff have stood behind the public, we will continue to do that.”

A spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “I think, firstly, it is obviously regrettable that it had to come to court action in the first instance.

“The government never wanted to take this to court. We did indeed try every possible way to avoid a court case.”