An exasperated Wes Streeting has begun to plead with the British Medical Association now that the junior doctor strike has kicked off. A six-day walkout began at 7 a.m…
The Health Secretary told Sky News the strike will cost £300 million:
“Every time the BMA takes resident doctors out on strike, it costs the NHS about 50 million pounds a day. So this strike action is going to cost us about £300 million.
What I find extraordinary about the situation that we’re in is that the BMA when this government came in having been treated badly by the Conservatives, we don’t doubt that, this government came in and gave resident doctors a 28.9% pay rise and they still went on strike. We put a deal to the BMA which we had negotiated in good faith with their officers who endorsed the deal and put it to their committee. included a 4.9% pay rise this year on average, as high as 7.1% for some of their members. They still went on strike. It would have created an extra 4 a half thousand training places, a thousand materialising this month, and they still went on strike.“
Streeting essentially asked for more leniency from the union:
“I don’t pretend that in less than two years a Labour government has solved all of the issues facing resident doctors. But I would also ask the BMA not to pretend that a Labour government can solve all of the problems of more than a decade in the making in less than two years. Negotiation is about give and take. Getting this country out of the mess it is in thanks to more than a decade of Conservative government requires all of us to pull together. The government’s done a lot of giving. The BMA’s done a lot of taking.”
On the Today programme Streeting pleaded: “look at the state of our public finances… look at the state of the world… we’ve been enormously sympathetic.” Oh dear…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”