Wes Streeting has told resident doctors that strikes and a jump in flu cases over the Christmas period could be “the Jenga piece” that forces the NHS to collapse.
The health secretary said the NHS faced a “challenge unlike any it has seen since the pandemic” and urged resident doctors to accept the government’s offer and end their actions.
He said: “The whole NHS team is working around the clock to keep the show on the road. But it’s an incredibly precarious situation. Christmas strikes could be the Jenga piece that collapses the tower. That’s why I am appealing directly to resident doctors to accept the government’s offer.”
NHS figures published on Thursday showed flu cases at a record level for the time of year after jumping 55% in a week to an average 2,660 patients in hospital each day last week.
Resident doctors are to strike from 17 December to 22 December, although members of the British Medical Association (BMA) union are currently voting on a new offer from the government that could put a stop to the action.
Writing in the Times, Streeting said the number of patients in hospital in England could triple by the peak and described the scenes in hospital as “inexcusable”.
Dr Chris Streather, a regional medical director at NHS England, said the impact of flu admissions on hospitals was “pretty bad” but it was “nothing like the scale” of the Covid pandemic.
Chart showing flu patients in hospital
Asked if talk of the NHS collapsing was over the top, Streather told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The NHS is coping at the moment. The flu rates are still going up.”
He added: “It’s well within the boundaries of what we can cope with. One of the things we learned during the pandemic was our preparation for coping with large outbreaks of respiratory viruses got better. We increased the number of critical care or intensive care beds during that time, so we’re better prepared. And it’s a different scale from the situation we’re facing in March 2020, you have to prepare for the worst case.”
Streather said there were 2,500 patients in hospitals in England with flu admissions, a 55% increase on the previous week and the equivalent of three large hospitals being full of flu patients.
“It’s a significant problem,” he said. “It’s nothing like the scale of the 2020 pandemic. And I think we need to use our language to make people do the right healthy behaviours but not to cause alarm at the moment.”
The health secretary said the BMA leadership calling off planned Christmas strikes would have “given the NHS certainty this week, when it is firefighting the flu epidemic”.
The BMA said it would consult members by surveying them online on whether a new deal from the government was enough to call off strikes next week. The online poll will close on Monday, two days before the five-day strike is due to start.
The union said the new offer included new legislation to ensure homegrown doctors in training had priority for speciality training roles, an increase in speciality training posts over the next three years, with 1,000 of these to start in 2026, and funding mandatory examination and royal college membership fees for resident doctors.
Asked on LBC radio on Friday if the collapse of the NHS was at “one minute to midnight”, Streeting replied: “Effectively, yeah.”
Streeting said he offered to extend the BMA’s mandate on strike action to February so strikes could be rearranged for January.
He said: “I cannot understand why, when I offered to rearrange strikes in January, why they didn’t take up that offer. Because if they wanted to just give me a kicking well, there’s an opportunity to do that in January.
“I can only assume that the reason why they refuse to do that is because they know that this week will be most painful for the NHS.
“Most painful for me, sure, but to be honest, given the pressure that puts on other NHS staff and the risk it poses to patients, I don’t understand why the BMA have not been willing to compromise in that way.”
