BMA confirms resident doctor strikes will go ahead
After the meeting, Wes Streeting reiterated that 'we cannot move on pay after a 28.9% pay rise' but added that the Government was looking at ways to improve resident doctors' working lives.
The BMA resident doctors committee said while members were happy to discuss non-pay issues, the row 'is at its core a pay dispute'.
Strikes will take place for five consecutive days from 7am on Friday July 25.
Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, co-chairs of the BMA's resident doctors committee, said: 'We have always said that no doctor wants to strike and all it would take to avoid it is a credible path to pay restoration offered by the Government.
'We came to talks in good faith, keen to explore real solutions to the problems facing resident doctors today.
'Unfortunately, we did not receive an offer that would meet the scale of those challenges.
'While we were happy to discuss non-pay issues that affect doctors' finances we have always been upfront that this is at its core a pay dispute.
'The simplest and most direct means of restoring the more than a fifth of our pay that has eroded since 2008 is to raise our pay.
'While we were keen to discuss other items, it was made very clear by the Government that this obvious course of action was going to remain off the table.'
The statement added that 'student debt and the cost of training remain crushing burdens on the finances of resident doctors' and while the BMA hoped there would be 'new ideas' to tackle this, what was proposed 'would not have been significant enough to change the day-to-day financial situation for our members'.
'However our door remains open, and we are glad to have met with the Secretary of State in a constructive spirit. We want to keep talking but we don't accept we can't talk about pay,' they said.
Reacting to the BMA's announcement, Mr Streeting said there was an opportunity for the union 'to work with us on a range of options that would have made a real difference to resident doctors' working conditions and created extra roles to deal with the bottlenecks that hold back their career progression'.
'Instead, they have recklessly and needlessly opted for strike action.
'The BMA would have lost nothing by taking up the offer to postpone strike action to negotiate a package that would improve the working lives of resident doctors.
'By refusing to do so, they will cause unnecessary disruption to patients, put additional pressure on their NHS colleagues and not take the opportunity to improve their own working conditions.
'All of my attention will be now on averting harm to patients and supporting NHS staff at work.
'After a 28.9% pay hike in the last three years and the highest pay rise in the public sector two years in a row, strike action is completely unjustified, completely unprecedented in the history of British trade unionism and shows a complete disdain for patients and the wider recovery of the NHS.'
It came after research suggested public support for the strike is waning.
A YouGov poll showed about half (52%) of people in the UK 'somewhat oppose' (20%) or 'strongly oppose' (32%) resident doctors going on strike over pay.
A third (34%) of the 4,954 adults surveyed either 'somewhat support' (23%) or 'strongly support' (11%) doctor strikes.
YouGov said the proportion supporting the strike over pay has dropped five points since it last asked the question in May, when 48% opposed the strikes and 39% supported them.
A row between the BMA and health leaders also deepened on Tuesday.
NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts, hit back at the union's claims that health leaders were putting patients at risk, saying it was the 'costly' BMA strike that was risking patient care.
Earlier, the BMA said NHS England plans for managing the strike could put patients at risk because it has ordered hospitals to continue with as much pre-planned care as possible.
In a letter to trust leaders, it urged the health system to focus on maintaining emergency care, the flow of patients and elective care 'to the fullest extent possible', as well as 'priority treatments' such as cancer care.
'It will be important for systems and trusts to try and maintain normal levels of booked activity,' it said, adding: 'Reducing volumes of bookings and rescheduling of appointments and other activity should only happen in exceptional circumstances to safeguard patient safety.'
On Tuesday morning, BMA deputy chairwoman Dr Emma Runswick told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this plan risked patient safety.
She said: 'We think that a notional guidance from NHS England which is saying that basically all scheduled work should continue to go ahead has potential to be seriously risky for patients.
'Senior doctors are needed to be freed up in order to provide urgency and critical care.
'We think the vast majority of planned and unscheduled care should be shifted.'
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Mr Streeting said that before he came into office, 'strikes were crippling the NHS'.
He added: 'Costs ran to £1.7 billion in just one year, and patients saw 1.5 million appointments rescheduled.'
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