The Health Secretary on Monday accused junior doctors of pursuing “politically motivated” strikes and claimed the Government had done all it could to address their pay demands.
As the latest walkout entered a fourth day, Steve Barclay said the British Medical Association’s campaign for a 35 per cent pay hike would only fuel painfully high inflation.
“It’s harming patients for the BMA to see what seems to be increasingly a politically motivated strike against the Government and doesn’t recognise the fact that junior doctors are getting an average of 8.8 per cent in terms of a pay rise this year,” he told TalkTV.
“We’ve accepted in full the recommendations on the independent pay review body process. What that means for junior doctors starting this summer is a pay rise of 10.3 per cent.” He added that the BMA had also succeeded in winning concessions on pensions.
But the strike leaders for the junior doctors, Dr Rob Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, denied they were pursuing an anti-government agenda and said Mr Barclay “continues to posture and pontificate”. They said: “What he and the Prime Minister should be doing is getting back round the table with us to find a way of ending this dispute.”
Rishi Sunak has made cutting hospital waiting lists — which hit a record 7.57 million people in England alone in June — one of his five key priorities.
But in a move denounced by devolved governments as a political stunt, Mr Barclay said he was open to patients from Wales and Scotland to be treated on the NHS in England to bring down their own waiting lists.
The health minister meanwhile announced a new consultation on inserting information cards into cigarette packets, modelled on what he called a successful initiative by Canada to bring down smoking rates.
But he refused to confirm reports that the Government plans to ditch six of its nine targets for cancer treatment after failing to meet them for years.
