Exclusive: Health secretary says Labour will not meet union’s pay demands but both sides can ‘win the peace’
Exclusive: Health secretary says Labour will not meet union’s pay demands but both sides can ‘win the peace’
The doctors union “will lose a war with this government”, Wes Streeting has said, adding that the NHS is ready to tough out a prolonged series of strikes by the British Medical Association (BMA).
In his most outspoken comments so far about the dispute involving resident doctors in England, the health secretary vowed that Labour would never give in to their demand for a 29% pay rise.
However, in a plea to the BMA, he urged it to agree a deal based on tackling other frustrations those doctors have, separate to their salaries, in which both sides would “win the peace”.
Fresh talks are planned next week. For these to have any chance of success, Streeting said, the BMA should agree it will not call any more strikes and accept that other NHS staff deserve decent pay increases too, not just medics, who are already paid more than many colleagues.
“It should be clear to the BMA by now that they will lose a war with this government. It’s not too late for us both to win the peace,” Streeting said in an opinion piece for the Guardian.
It comes after the end of a five-day stoppage by thousands of resident doctors that disrupted NHS services including cancer care between last Friday and Wednesday morning.
“All I ask of the BMA is two things. The first is to drop this unnecessary and unreasonable rush to strike action. It mars doctors, it harms patients and it is fundamentally self-defeating because it leaves the NHS with less money to address the issues that doctors care about,” Streeting said.
