Resident doctors across England are set to go ahead with a six-day walkout next week after Sir Keir Starmer failed to strike a deal – despite his ultimatum to withdraw a key part of the government’s offer.
The NHS is braced for tens of thousands of medics to join the strikes from 7am on Tuesday, immediately after the Easter bank holiday.
The collapse of talks this week prompted the government to withdraw an offer of 1,000 additional training places, saying it is no longer considered "financially or operationally" possible.
The move, which came after the prime minister gave doctors a 48-hour warning to reconsider industrial action, has been described as not only “bad for doctors”, but “also bad for patients”.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the British Medical Association’s resident doctors committee, said he would “happily” meet with ministers over the Easter weekend to avoid walkouts if an improved offer was put forward.
“The way out of this is to sit down and work together to get out of this,” he told LBC on Thursday.
“I will happily meet the government, the secretary of state, whoever wants to meet with us to try and find a way out of this, but ultimately, there has to be an improvement to that offer.”
When challenged on why the BMA did not put the government’s offer to members, Dr Fletcher said it did not meet the threshold, and accused the government of pushing for the move to ensure a six-week referendum.
“The reason why the government keep insisting on putting things to members is because they want us to tie ourselves into a six-week referendum period. That’s specifically what they’ve asked for,” he said.
Explaining that the current BMA mandate for strikes lasts six months, adding: “So if every time the government came forward with an offer, we spent six weeks repeatedly putting it to members.”
Sir Keir Starmer issued an ultimatum to the BMA’s resident doctors committee this week, giving them a 48-hour deadline to reconsider the government’s comprehensive pay and jobs package, which had encompassed the now-rescinded NHS training posts.
As the deadline approached, the BMA set out a list of demands for government which would need to be addressed for them to call off the strike.
It comes as the head of the NHS in England said it would increasingly look at clinical models to reduce reliance on resident doctors.
Speaking to the Health Service Journal, he said the service was asking: “How do you build [services] less reliant on a transient training workforce and more on a more blended clinical family?”
He said that while the strategy was not meant “as a threat to residents”, it is necessary to consider alternative models “if we continue to have a system that feels unreliable, [when] one of the key things the population needs from us is reliability”.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said it is “disappointing” that the strikes will still go ahead and said: “This government offered resident doctors a generous deal to improve their pay, career progression and working lives that would have seen resident doctors on average 35.2 per cent better off than they were four years ago.
“Because the BMA resident doctor committee has not agreed to call off these strikes and put an offer to members, we will now not be able to deliver the 1,000 extra training places which the BMA asked for.”
In a letter sent to health secretary Wes Streeting on Wednesday, Dr Fletcher, chairman of the doctors’ committee, said the current offer from the government “falls short” and “did not meet the standard required” to put to members of the union.
Dr Fletcher said government “threats” to remove training places in the current offer “needlessly and avoidably inflamed the dispute”.
The BMA said that in order to cancel action, several issues must be addressed in any new government offer on jobs and pay.
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