Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Debate between Alex McIntyre and Wes Streeting

Thursday 10th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I think the shadow Secretary of State’s memory is letting him down. Let me just remind him that before the general election, and after months of refusing to meet the BMA, the Conservatives finally entered negotiations, but not before strikes were left to run and run—at a cost of £1.7 billion to the taxpayer—and 1.5 million operations, appointments and procedures were cancelled. They also offered the BMA junior doctors a pay rise, which was only about 4% of the pay rise that we eventually agreed. Imagine what would have happened if the Conservatives had pulled their finger out and got the doctors around the table sooner, and had not been quite so intransigent.

The shadow Secretary of State is right to say that I criticised my predecessors for their unwillingness to negotiate. The difference between me and them is that I have acted. Resident doctors have had a 28.9% pay increase thanks to the decisions that I have taken as Secretary of State, with the support of the entire Government. They have a Secretary of State who does not slam the door in their face, but who is open to working with them to improve their conditions.

The responsibility for these strikes lies squarely with those running the BMA’s resident doctors committee. Despite failing to get a majority of their members to vote for strike action for the first time in their campaign, they are still proposing to lead their members out on a five-day strike. They even made the announcement on the day that I had already written to them to suggest that we meet to avert unnecessary strike action.

The shadow Secretary of State is right to talk about the jeopardy facing the future. Because we produced our 10-year plan in partnership with patients, the public and NHS staff, there is not only much in it that resident doctors should welcome, but much that they suggested. Our 10-year workforce plan will set out training, education and retention of the workforce, and we will work closely with resident doctors on standards. They should start to experience an improvement in their working conditions on everything from the availability of nutritious food and drink to reducing violence against staff and tackling discrimination. We have already committed to prioritise UK graduates for training, and we have started a conversation on contractual reform with trade unions across the board. We are determined to recruit more people locally and to tackle social disadvantage, access to medicine and all the issues that are at the forefront of the minds of resident doctors, such as placements, rotations and future career progression, including specialty bottlenecks. I absolutely want to work with them.

These are not conditions for strikes. These are conditions to work in partnership with the Government, just as other NHS unions and so many other trade unions across the public sector do. I say to resident doctors once more that sitting in front of me is the ghost of Christmas past. Reform—its Members are not in their place today—is the ghost of Christmas future. Perhaps BMA members might consider that they are lucky to have the ghost of Christmas present in front of them.

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

I am glad the Secretary of State has reminded Conservative Members that they have rather short-term memories. When I took my place in this House last year, thousands of my residents in Gloucester were on NHS waiting lists—many of them for longer than 18 months. Since this Labour Government took power last year, the number has come down by 92%, in part thanks to the hard work of resident doctors in my constituency. Does the Secretary of State agree that strike action by the BMA will put that recovery at risk? Will he invite its members to meet my residents who are still on the waiting lists left behind by the Conservative party, so that they can explain why the 28.9% pay rise, which many of my constituents will not receive this year, is not enough?

[Wes Streeting]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I urge BMA members to consider not just the significant progress that they have already made by working with a Labour Government, but the wider context in which we are operating. It is not just resident doctors who have seen their pay eroded over more than a decade of Conservative Government; it is the entire public sector. It is not just resident doctors who are working in crumbling buildings with out-of-date equipment and technology; it is the same in our schools, our hospitals, our prisons and the entire public sector estate.

This Government are facing enormous challenges across our economy, and we cannot sort out every issue that we inherited overnight, or even in one year—it is going to take time. BMA members should be proud of the progress that we have made together, and reassured that we want to make further progress with them, but there has to be some give and take here, and there has to be some reasonableness. Given the potential consequences of their action for patients, for their fellow staff and for the future of the NHS, the strike action is unreasonable, unnecessary and deeply unfair.

NHS 10-Year Plan

Debate between Alex McIntyre and Wes Streeting

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am always willing to search the world for ways to spend taxpayers’ money more effectively, and the right hon. Gentleman makes some good arguments on making sure that we get a good deal on medicines pricing, and on using the real procurement power of the single payer model—but therein lies the answer to the other part of his challenge. It is the single payer model, created in 1948, that makes the NHS ideally placed to get much better value in procurement, and to harness and lead the revolution in AI, machine learning, genomics and big data, in a way that many insurance-based systems struggle with. I assure him that if there were a better way of funding the NHS, I would have the political courage to make the argument, but we looked at other systems of funding and concluded that that is really not the problem. It is not the model of funding; it is the model of care, and that is what we are going to sort out.

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

When I knock on doors in my Gloucester constituency, I hear time and again about the importance of tackling the 8 am scramble for a GP appointment, and the difficulty many of my constituents faced under the Conservative Government getting the care they needed. Will my right hon. Friend explain how Labour’s 10-year plan for health will deliver on the Government’s mission to get treatment out of hospitals and into the community, so that every one of my constituents can get the care they need in the community in which they live?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question; he is such a strong voice for the people of Gloucester. We are already delivering improvements in general practice, with 1,900 more GPs employed on the frontline, £900 million more for general practice, and the first contract agreed with GPs for quite some years. We are working in genuine partnership with GPs, who will be at the centre of the neighbourhood health service and of neighbourhood health centres. I am determined to ensure that we do things with our friends in general practice, not to them. Where things are working, I have no interest in going in like a bull in a china shop and imposing top-down change unnecessarily; we learned that lesson from Lord Lansley. I am confident that we have a plan that GPs will relish and embrace, and that they will feel reassured that the future of general practice is bright. After years of campaigning for a Government to rebuild general practice, they finally have a Government who are on their side.