The country would ‘break’ under the strain of meeting striking doctors’ pay demands as it would end up costing taxpayers £30billion a year, Wes Streeting has warned.
Resident doctors want an extra £3billion a year but the health secretary said the real burden would be ten-times higher as it is likely other staff would expect the same deal if he caved in.
It comes as resident doctors today returned to work after a six-day walkout that is estimated to have cost the NHS £300million in lost activity and overtime to covering consultants.
They have taken to the picket lines on more than 60 days across 15 rounds of strikes over the past three years and are now pursuing a 26 per cent pay rise on top of the 28.9 per cent they have received over this period.
The British Medical Association has accused the Government of going back on an offer made last month to resolve the long-running dispute and is demanding pay is restored to 2008 levels under retail price index (RPI) measures of inflation.
Speaking at an Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) event this morning, Mr Streeting said there was agreement between the Government and doctors about many of the issues in the NHS ‘but there isn’t an acknowledgement from the BMA’ that the £300 million lost to six days of strike action is money that could have been spent elsewhere.
He added: ‘I feel like we’ve turned the ship, the boat’s going in the right direction, except some of the crew are trying to row in one direction while the rest of us are going in the other. You can’t make progress that way.
‘We are seeing an improving NHS, and we’ve seen improvement despite resident doctors’ strikes, but the fact is, performance would have been better and there would have been more money to invest in staff and services if the BMA hadn’t been undertaking the strike action.
Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting said NHS would be performing better if resident doctors had not walked out on strike.
‘So there needs to be a bit of compromise and bit of give and take here.’
Mr Streeting said there was no doubt pay had been eroded by the Conservatives, but he said resident doctors are not the only people who work in the NHS.
‘I’ve got a responsibility to all one and a half million people who work in the NHS, and the same number all over again who work in social care, many of whom are never paid as much as the lowest-paid doctor,’ he said.
‘And while the NHS will always be Labour’s number one priority as a public service, it is not the only public service in this country.’
He said if the BMA’s underlying assumptions about pay restoration were accepted, ‘we’d be looking at £3 billion a year for full pay restoration for resident doctors.
‘Not unreasonably, I think other staff would have something to say about that: “We’d like some of that too”…
‘So then you’re looking at £30 billion a year. And before you know it, just by doing that one thing, full pay restoration for NHS staff … we’ve just spent, just like that, more money than we spend on the entirety of the criminal justice system.
‘So I really do think it’s time for the BMA to get real.
Resident doctors are pursuing a 26 per cent pay rise on top of the 28.9 per cent they have received over the past three years.
‘We all have a stake in this. We all have to pull together as a country, and if everyone was demanding the same as resident doctors, and if everyone was behaving the same way as resident doctors, we would be breaking this country.
‘I think it’s time they got a bit of perspective…’
The BMA’s resident doctors committee last month rejected a deal that would have taken medics pay rises over the past three years to 35 per cent and created thousands of new speciality training places that would have allowed members to further their careers.
If they had accepted, some would have been earning more than £100,000 a year, while those in their first year out of medical school would have started on an average of £52,000 a year.
Senior health officials have discussed banning doctors from striking in a bid to end the long-running row over pay and Mr Streeting has accepted it is an ‘option’ that remains on the table, although the Department of Health and Care said the government is not considering the move.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch used an article in the Daily Mail last week to say she would subject the medics to the same restrictions as the army and police and called on Mr Streeting to do the same.
Sir Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS England, said the latest round of strikes had been ‘deliberately timed to cause havoc’, with hospitals finding it ‘challenging’ to fill rotas following the Easter weekend.
He has vowed to overhaul frontline healthcare to make it less dependent on ‘unreliable’ resident doctors, with other healthcare workers deployed to take on some of their roles.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chairman of the BMA resident doctors committee, said: ‘It’s disappointing that the health secretary is once again choosing hostile rhetoric in the media and outside of the negotiating room over and above getting round the table and speaking to us directly.
‘We don’t recognise the sums that he is using to cost pay restoration. Nor have we at any point said it would be done all in one go.
‘We’re keen to do a deal, and look forward to discussing this with the Government as soon as possible.’
