Steve Barclay defended the Government’s stance on NHS pay rises as he claimed junior doctors had “walked away from talks”.
Speaking on Sunday, Mr Barclay refused to confirm whether a six per cent pay rise for doctors would be acceptable ahead of a strike later this month.
“These will be discussions that I have on behalf of health workforce with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, that the Education Secretary will have on behalf of teachers and other ministers will have across government so we will have those and we’ll make announcements in due course,” Mr Barclay told Sky’s Sophy Ridge.
He went on to claim that junior doctors left discussions after three weeks of talks.
“We were in the middle of discussing some of those wider non-pay issues, it is the junior doctors suddenly who walked away from the discussions and called a further strike,” he added.
He then said that the Government would look at pay review body recommendations “in the round”.
The minister added that the Government had recognised both the needs of staff and the needs of the wider economy with recent pay talks.
He added: “Of course we need to look at the wider pressures in terms of inflation... we need to look at these things in the round. That’s what we did last time, which is why we made adjustments.
“Of course we will take a similar approach this time.”
Separately, he said the Government’s long-awaited NHS workforce plan - published this week - is “hugely historic” and the “biggest ever expansion in workforce training in the NHS”.
