Wes Streeting has said resident doctors’ strikes would be “a gift to Nigel Farage” before a meeting with the British Medical Association this week where he will seek to avert industrial action.
The health secretary told a meeting of Labour MPs on Monday that ministers were “in the fight for the survival of the NHS” and if Labour failed, Farage would argue for it to be replaced by an insurance-style system.
Streeting will meet BMA officials later this week in an attempt to prevent five days of strikes by resident doctors, which are due to begin on 25 July.
Speaking at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, he said: “The BMA’s threats are unnecessary, unreasonable, and unfair. More than that, these strikes would be a gift to Nigel Farage, just as we are beginning to cut waiting lists and get the NHS moving in the right direction.
“What better recruitment agent could there be for his rightwing populist attacks on the very existence of a publicly funded, free at the point of need, universal health service? He is praying that we fail on the NHS.
“If Labour fail, he will point to that as proof that the NHS has failed, and must now be replaced by an insurance-style system. So we are in the fight for the survival of the NHS, and it is a fight I have no intention of losing.”
Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, voted to take industrial action in pursuit of a 29% pay rise that the union has said is needed to replace lost pay over years of cuts.
Labour has offered resident doctors a 5.4% pay rise this year, after a 22% rise agreed for the previous two years.
Streeting said earlier on Monday that the strike would be a “catastrophic mistake” and that any decision by resident doctors not to tell their employers about their intention to strike would be “shockingly irresponsible”.
Speaking to the health and social care select committee, he said that BMA leaders seemed to be telling their members “not to inform their trusts or their employers if they’re going out on strike” and that he could not fathom “how any doctor in good conscience would make it harder for managers to make sure we have safe staffing levels”.
He argued that “going on strike having received a 28.9% pay increase is not only unreasonable and unnecessary given the progress that we’ve been making on pay and other issues, it’s also self-defeating”.
The figure is based on government calculations that resident doctors have received a 28.9% pay rise over the last three years.
The health secretary said there was “no more room for manoeuvre” on residents doctors’ pay but that he was willing to engage on several other union demands including on unemployment and progression into speciality posts.
He said any decision by resident doctors not to inform their trusts that they were striking “would make it harder for other staff who are going to be turning up to work that day, not least the staff who have not had a higher percentage pay rise, many of whom are paid less than resident doctors”.
Streeting said that while he accepted doctors’ right to strike, the “idea that doctors would go on strike without informing their employer, not allowing planning for safe staffing, I think, is unconscionable, and I would urge resident doctors who are taking part in strike actions to do the right thing”.
He warned the strike would lead to cancellations and delays in patient treatment, and spoke of a family member who was waiting for the “inevitable” phone call informing them that their procedure would be postponed.
“We can mitigate against the impact of strikes, and we will, but what we cannot do is promise that there will be no consequence and no delay, no further suffering, because there are lots of people whose procedures are scheduled over that weekend period and in the period subsequently, where the NHS has to recover from the industrial action, who will see their operations and appointments delayed,” he said.
“I have a relative in that position. My family are currently dreading what I fear is an inevitable phone call saying that there is going to be a delay to this procedure. And I just think this is an unconscionable thing to do to the public, not least given the 28.9% pay rise.”
The BMA defended resident doctors’ pay claim on Monday, saying they did not work through the Covid pandemic only to end up with a real-terms pay cut. “We are still down compared to even the pandemic in 2020,” Emma Runswick, a resident doctor in Greater Manchester and deputy chair of the BMA council, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.