Health secretary Wes Streeting has accused the British Medical Association (BMA) of 'delusion' after last-ditch talks to avert a six-day strike by resident doctors in England failed. The walkout, the longest yet, is set to begin at 7am on Tuesday, just after the Easter weekend.
Streeting confirmed in a letter to the BMA that he had withdrawn his offer to create 1,000 extra specialist training places this year, which was conditional on the union accepting the government's latest pay offer. The BMA rejected that offer last week.
The strike will be the 16th since March 2023, and there are growing fears the dispute could drag on for another year. The BMA's resident doctors committee is demanding a 26% pay rise, which ministers say is unaffordable given the state of public finances.
In his letter, Streeting told Dr Jack Fletcher, the committee's chair, that the BMA had failed to come back with a counterproposal despite claiming to seek a negotiated settlement. 'If members of your committee cannot reach an agreed position among themselves, it is hard to see how the government will be able to reach an agreement with your committee,' he wrote.
Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS England, said the health service faced 'a long slog' of continuing strikes and would increasingly have to reduce reliance on resident doctors. Mike Prentice, NHS England's national director for emergency planning, warned trusts that the strike's timing, with many staff on Easter leave, would be 'challenging' and 'represent a significant strain on staffing resources to provide safe cover'.
