Even LABOUR wouldn’t meet striking NHS doctors’ pay demands: Shadow Health Secretary labels 35% rise ‘unaffordable’
Labor would not meet the pay demands of striking NHS medics, the Shadow Health Secretary has confirmed.
Trainee doctors, who are seeking a 35 per cent pay rise, took to the picket lines today as part of their latest round of action in their ongoing dispute with the government, while consultants staged strikes earlier this week in a bid to win a pay rise of to get 11 percent. to get up.
The government has offered doctors between six and ten percent, saying this is their ‘final offer’.
However, Wes Streeting admitted that a 35 per cent increase was ‘not a policy that Labor can afford’ and warned that doctors would have to wait until 2030 for their pay to reach this level.
The MP for Ilford North hit out at the strikes for causing ‘untold misery’ to patients who are ‘agonizingly waiting’ for crucial appointments and operations to be canceled – and ‘undoubtedly’ dying while queuing for care.
Wes Streeting admitted that a 35 per cent increase was ‘not a policy Labor can afford’ and warned that doctors would have to wait until 2030 for their pay to reach this level.
Pictured: NHS consultants and trainee doctors carry signs as they strike outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London on September 20
Asked during an interview with GB News on the pay rise Labor would offer NHS medics, he said: ‘You’re going to have to compromise somewhere.
“I said to the doctors, look, 35 per cent overnight is not a policy that Labor can afford, which has not been popular with everyone.
“I’d rather be honest on this side of the election than break promises on the other side of the election if we win.”
Mr Streeting said he wanted to put doctors ‘on the path to making reparations’ – which is what the 35 per cent increase would deliver – but could not say when that might be achieved.
Asked whether doctors might have gotten their pay rise as early as the fifth year of a Labor government – which would be 2029 or 2030, if they win the next general election – he said: “I don’t know if that will happen within one year.” term will happen.
‘But I am prepared to negotiate with the doctors and say: look, I recognize the pressure you are under. What can we do to help you with living expenses?’
Mr Streeting said Labor had resisted demands for big pay rises for public sector workers before the 1997 election crisis, but had ultimately delivered for them.
He said: ‘We have put them on the path of wage recovery, in fact before the ’97 general election Labor was under enormous pressure to make the kind of commitments that people are now asking me to make.
‘We are rightly reluctant to make promises unless they knew they could keep them. And yet that Labor government has indeed achieved wage recovery.’
Junior doctors today entered the final day of their latest round of industrial action. The strike, which started at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, will end on Saturday morning.
Consultants also stood on picket lines for 48 hours this week, marking the first time in the 75-year history of the health service that both groups of medics have taken coordinated strike action.
This ensured that patients in hospitals had ‘Christmas Day’ cover, while emergency departments were staffed and wards had basic cover.
Further joint action by both groups of doctors is planned for October 2, 3 and 4.
Health leaders warned patients to expect five ‘Christmas’ over the next three weeks, meaning most non-urgent care has been cancelled.
Before this week’s strikes, trainee doctors staged a 19-day strike this year, with consultants taking to the picket lines on four separate days.
Many routine hospital appointments and treatments, including cancer care, have been postponed due to industrial action, which is being coordinated by the British Medical Association (BMA).
Senior leaders expect the toll from the latest strikes to reach a million, with 100,000 cancellations expected this week alone.
Consultants in England have joined the picket lines on four separate days so far this summer, while junior doctors have staged 19 days of strike action this year. Both will return to the picket lines together on October 2, 3 and 4. Radiographers will also join medics in walking out for 24 hours from 8am on October 3.
Some 885,154 appointments have been postponed since the NHS industrial action – involving staff such as doctors, nurses and paramedics – started in December.
England’s backlog of procedures such as hip and knee replacements now stands at 7.6 million, official figures revealed last week. It means about one in seven people across the country are currently stuck in the system awaiting care
The BMA states that doctors have seen their wages fall by 35 percent over the past fifteen years. As a result, junior doctors have called for a 35 percent pay increase, while consultants have set their pay demands at 11 percent.
By comparison, the government has offered trainee doctors a pay rise of between 8.1 and 10.3 percent, while consultants were offered 6 percent.
Mr Streeting claimed he would end the doctors’ strikes by getting doctors and consultants ‘around the table and negotiating a solution’.
He said it was “disgraceful” that the Prime Minister had not met doctors and that Health Secretary Steve Barclay had not negotiated with the BMA since March.
“Given the cost of living, this is the biggest crisis in the country right now. “I don’t understand why the Prime Minister is not giving this his full attention,” he said.
‘And I have come to the conclusion, he has actually said: ‘I made the promise to reduce the waiting lists, I know that now I have no chance of fulfilling that, at least if I can blame the doctors for this persistent problems. strikes, I’m off the hook.”
It comes after it was revealed today that a patient’s surgery to relieve his crippling migraines has been canceled twice due to strikes.
The patient’s wife, Fiona Chapman, from Wadebridge, Cornwall, said her partner was due to have the procedure in June but it was canceled due to doctors’ industrial action.
His surgery, which would involve placing a device at the back of the head to zap nearby nerves and ease pain, was postponed until August – before being canceled again.
Mrs Chapman, whose husband can no longer work due to his condition, was told by doctors that they hope to operate in October. But now he has been warned again that further strikes by NHS staff could lead to further delays.
Dr. Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, told Good Morning Britain: ‘I am shocked that Fiona and her family and her husband have unfortunately had to reschedule their appointments and operations in this case due to the continued failures of Our government .
‘Our government has allowed a workforce crisis to develop which has seen our waiting lists increase by millions in recent years before strike action took place.
“And all we wanted to do was have a reasonable conversation with the government about how doctors are underpaid and therefore can’t properly care for patients.
“But they have ignored us and forced us into strike action and have made no effort to avert that strike action, which is a very different approach to what we have seen from our colleagues in Scotland.
‘So of course I am sorry to Fiona and her family that the strike action has caused disruption.
“But by nature, it has to be disruptive to put pressure on the government to come back to the table.
“But in both cases the government failed to act and this could have been prevented in the first place.”