The British Medical Association and Wes Streeting have agreed to fresh talks after resident doctors’ five-day strike in England ended yesterday.
The health secretary vowed that the government would never give in to resident doctors’ demand for a 29% pay rise, but urged the union to agree a deal based on tackling other frustrations those doctors have, in which both sides could “win the peace”.
Writing in the Guardian, Wes Streeting shared that the doctors’ union had written to him asking him to return to the negotiating table.
“I’ve responded, with the irony of their letter being that I never left the table,” said the health secretary. “We are back to where we were two weeks ago, when I sat down in good faith and offered to work intensively with them over a few weeks to negotiate a package of measures that would make a real difference in meeting the costs of doctors’ training, the costs associated with being a doctor and the lack of promotion opportunities.”
Resident doctors
He said the only difference between now and a fortnight ago is the damage that the BMA has done to the NHS through its reckless strike action.
Talks are expected to resume early next week, with the dispute over pay erosion expanding to include “training bottlenecks”, after the BMA published the results of a survey claiming that a third of resident doctors have no specialty training job secured for next month.
BMA resident doctors committee co-chairs Dr Ross Nieuwoudt and Dr Melissa Ryan said yesterday: “Resident doctors want this to have been their last strike. We are asking Mr Streeting to leave the political rhetoric behind and put the future of the NHS first.
“He could have prevented strike action if he had made a credible offer last week; instead of that we got the offer of more talks. Now is the time to get serious.”
They said a cohort of new doctors will join the NHS workforce in the coming weeks, “facing a future of tens of thousands of pounds of debt, being paid less than their assistants, and shockingly even unemployment”.
“We hope now will be a moment for the health secretary to reconsider his strategy. Yesterday saw the start of a new dispute with the government over a lack of training posts for doctors.
“There is now a great opportunity for them to seize: they can address both pay and unemployment and secure the future of the NHS workforce within the next few weeks. All it needs is the boldness to come to the table and start putting down concrete offers. We’re glad to hear Mr Streeting is open to new talks. Let’s make them count.”
In his article, Streeting said: “Doctors are not the only staff I am responsible for in the NHS. The Royal College of Nursing will shortly publish a survey of its members and, without having seen the results, I have spent enough time with our nurses to know that they have not felt valued by the previous government and they are looking to Labour to deliver meaningful change to their profession.”
He said that the GMB, Unite and Unison have made similar representations on behalf of their members working in the NHS, and that none of them have received a pay rise of 28.9%.
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