Wes Streeting has criticised striking doctors, saying if “everyone was demanding the same” then “we would be breaking this country”.
The Health Secretary said meeting the demands of resident doctors and the British Medical Association (BMA) would cost £3 billion a year but could rise to £30 billion a year if other health staff were offered the same pay rises.
It comes as doctors in England returned to work in their long-running row with the Government over jobs and pay.
The six-day strike was the 15th round of industrial action by resident doctors since 2023.
The BMA has accused the Government of going back on an offer made last month to resolve the long-running dispute and is demanding pay is restored to 2008 levels under retail price index (RPI) measures of inflation.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting during his speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research (Stefan Rousseau/PA)
(Stefan Rousseau)
Speaking to reporters at an Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) event on Monday, Mr Streeting said there was agreement between the Government and doctors about many of the issues in the NHS “but there isn’t an acknowledgement from the BMA” that the £300 million lost to six days of strike action is money that could have been spent elsewhere.
He added: “I feel like we’ve turned the ship, the boat’s going in the right direction, except some of the crew are trying to row in one direction while the rest of us are going in the other. You can’t make progress that way.
“We are seeing an improving NHS, and we’ve seen improvement despite resident doctors’ strikes, but the fact is, performance would have been better and there would have been more money to invest in staff and services if the BMA hadn’t been undertaking the strike action.
“So there needs to be a bit of compromise and bit of give and take here.”
Mr Streeting there was no doubt pay had been eroded by the Conservatives, but he said resident doctors are not the only people who work in the NHS.
“I’ve got a responsibility to all one and a half million people who work in the NHS, and the same number all over again who work in social care, many of whom are never paid as much as the lowest-paid doctor,” he said.
“And while the NHS will always be Labour’s number one priority as a public service, it is not the only public service in this country.”
He said if the BMA’s underlying assumptions about pay restoration were accepted, “we’d be looking at £3 billion a year for full pay restoration for resident doctors.
“Not unreasonably, I think other staff would have something to say about that: ‘We’d like some of that too’…
“So then you’re looking at £30 billion a year. And before you know it, just by doing that one thing, full pay restoration for NHS staff … we’ve just spent, just like that, more money than we spend on the entirety of the criminal justice system.
“So I really do think it’s time for the BMA to get real.
“We all have a stake in this. We all have to pull together as a country, and if everyone was demanding the same as resident doctors, and if everyone was behaving the same way as resident doctors, we would be breaking this country.
“I think it’s time they got a bit of perspective…”
In his speech to the IPPR, Mr Streeting defended the NHS model of funding.
It comes after an IPPR study concluded that shifting the NHS to a European-style insurance system would not improve its performance.
The research found the problems the health service is facing are a result of “chronic underinvestment” rather than the way it is funded.
Experts said there is “no structural silver bullet” for the NHS, and talk about moving to a system similar to Germany, France and the Netherlands “is a pointless distraction”.
Mr Streeting said he believed in funding the NHS through tax, as at present, adding that if Reform UK leader Nigel Farage became prime minister, “there will be no NHS”.
He added: “Farage has said, ‘we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare’.
“Just last year he said, ‘I do not want it funded through general taxation. It doesn’t work’.
“What will come in its place? Farage says he’s ‘up for anything’. And for once, I believe him.”
Mr Streeting said the NHS is “now turning” the corner, with waiting lists at the lowest level for three years.
“Four-hour waiting times in A&E this winter were the best for four years,” he added, while “ambulances are arriving faster than for half a decade”.
He said: “The NHS is getting better bang for taxpayers’ buck, with productivity growing at 2.7%.”
Members of the BMA on the picket line outside John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford (Andrew Matthews/PA)
(Andrew Matthews)
However, he warned that a survey last year found half of millennials are planning to use private healthcare in the next year.
“Employers are finding medical insurance an attractive incentive for young recruits,” he said.
“That presents an existential crisis for the NHS.
“If a generation of patients opt out, they will eventually ask why they are paying so much in tax for a service they no longer use.
“This is the path to widening the health inequalities we want to close – and it puts the future of the NHS itself at risk.
“So the case for the NHS needs to be remade and re-won. And the NHS itself needs to modernised so it meets the needs of modern society.”
