Over the past 15 years, NHS staff have had a torrid time: they have been overstretched, buffeted by constant chaos and a chronic lack of investment. This government inherited a situation in which too many staff were burnt out, demoralised and simply done in.
It’s why one of my first acts as health and social care secretary was to get round the table, end the last resident doctor strikes and provide above inflation pay rises for all NHS staff, including a 22.3% rise for resident doctors (plus another 5.4% this year) – the biggest pay hike across the whole public sector.
Since then, I’ve worked closely with NHS staff to deliver record investment and much-needed reforms to the NHS. From getting waiting lists down to hiring 2,000 more GPs, from bringing in new tech and equipment to making staff’s lives easier, to starting the shift from sickness to prevention – we are making real progress.
When the prime minister launched our 10-year health plan earlier this month, NHS staff celebrated it. I knew from the hundreds of staff that were part of our engagement process – from doctors to nurses, health visitors to consultants, porters to midwives – that they were hungry for change. But their optimism, energy and ambition showed just how much we will be able to achieve if we work together, and the exciting future we can build.
That is why the decision by the British Medical Association’s resident doctors committee to rush into completely unnecessary strikes is so bitterly disappointing. Not only have we started turning the NHS around, we did it hand-in-hand.
The government proposed a range of measures to massively improve the working conditions doctors face – from tackling the costs of mandatory exams, to dealing with exhausting rotations that involve doctors pinging from hospital to hospital, to tackling bottlenecks by bringing in more specialist training places.
There was a deal here to be done. Instead, the BMA leadership’s decision to not even consider postponing these strikes will place an enormous burden on their colleagues, and hit the recovery we can all see our health service is making. Not only that, it enormously undermines the entire trade union movement. No trade union in British history has seen its members receive such a steep pay rise only to immediately respond with strikes – even when a majority of their members didn’t even vote to strike. This action is unprecedented, and it is unreasonable.
My focus now is on doing everything to minimise harm to patients.
This government is doing all it can to minimise the impact on patients from this strike, including trying to keep as much scheduled care as we can on track, as well as urgent and emergency care.
The BMA leadership would rather we just cancel those appointments because they don’t recognise that someone with cancer, for example, who has a scheduled operation could end up in a far worse place if surgery is postponed. It is not for them to determine whether they think the bar for patient pain is high enough. This government will prioritise patients and do everything we can to protect them.
All the same, these actions won’t just cause disruption, anxiety and patient harm. They are likely to cost a huge amount of money, which the NHS simply can’t afford. Instead of working with us on their conditions to put money back into the pockets of resident doctors, the BMA committee put their fingers in their ears and rushed out to strike.
I know from the many resident doctors who have reached out to me, and those I’ve met since I became health and social care secretary, that they feel the BMA’s leaders are out of step not just with patients, but most resident doctors themselves. It is hardly surprising a majority of resident doctors did not vote for this strike.
So I am urging resident doctors to not follow the BMA leadership, who I do not believe are representing the best interests of their members, any further down this path as strikes begin on Friday at 7am.
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