Resident doctors have “squandered the goodwill” of the government with their “self-defeating” strike action, said Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
The medics’ five-day strike over pay finished on Wednesday but the British Medical Association, which represents them, has not ruled out further action. In a letter to the BMA, the health secretary said the strike was “deeply disappointing and entirely unnecessary”.
The industrial action may have achieved less than the BMA hoped, said Ella Pickover in The Independent. “Fewer resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, took to picket lines” than those who took part in previous strikes and “it’s expected that fewer patients were affected” because “hospitals were ordered to press ahead with as much pre-planned care as possible”.
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The “word in the corridors” is that the BMA is “losing support across the NHS and among its own members”, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. History may have reassured the BMA “that the public will always trust doctors over politicians” but currently the public seems to be backing “those trying to cut waiting lists more than the strikers who are adding to them” .
“A return to the negotiating table had seemed almost impossible,” said Nick Triggle, health correspondent at the BBC, but, now the strike has ended, “both sides have shown signs of softening”. It’s “not gone unnoticed” by the BMA that public opinion seems to have “swung against resident doctors”.
People “close to Streeting” say “he wants to get a deal done” but there may not yet be “enough common ground”: the BMA wants to win a big pay rise, and Streeting “is adamant this is not an option”. Instead, the government may offer non-pay-related concessions, such as covering the cost of (compulsory) exam fees, making rotas and rotations “less brutal” and giving resident doctors “student loan repayment holidays”.
What next?
Streeting has been playing into “divisions” between the BMA and other healthcare unions to weaken the BMA’s hand, said Novara Media’s Polly Smythe in The Guardian. The Royal College of Nursing has called the government’s pre-strike offer to doctors of a 5.4% pay increase, while offering nurses 3.6%, “grotesque”.
The health secretary’s tactic brings its own dangers. Resident doctors aren’t the only ones that can “wreak havoc” on the NHS, said Alexa Phillips in The i Paper. Paramedics are as “unhappy” with their pay offer as nurses, and “hospital consultants are also threatening to strike in the autumn”.
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