Labour is facing fresh criticism after ministers secured additional money to avert a doctors’ strike, while continuing to resist calls for greater defence funding.
Resident doctors had been set to walk out tomorrow morning as part of a prolonged dispute over pay. But the planned industrial action was halted at the last minute after James Murray put forward a revised offer to the British Medical Association.
The Health Secretary, who moved into the department from the Treasury only last month, said the BMA had agreed to ballot its members on the proposal. He described the breakthrough as a “positive and welcome development.”
The late intervention has nonetheless prompted a political backlash. Conservatives, joined by former senior military figures, argued the Government had shown greater urgency in resolving union pressure than in addressing concerns over the armed forces.
They pointed to the contrast with service personnel, who are prohibited from striking and are still waiting to see whether the upcoming defence investment plan will provide the resources military leaders say are urgently needed.
Despite the cancellation of the walkout, the timing means some disruption for patients is still expected, with the strike only being called off at the eleventh hour.
‘Now they’ve shaken the magic money tree to bribe the BMA. Meanwhile our defence goes underfunded at a critical moment for our national security.
‘With a former Treasury Minister in charge of DHSC, Rachel Reeves is calling the shots over health just as she is over defence. Keir Starmer has lost control.
Health secretary James Murray said the union had agreed to ballot members on the proposal and described it as a ‘positive and welcome development’.
‘This latest payoff won’t stop more damaging strikes in the future. The Conservatives will ban strikes in the NHS and put patients first.’
Resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – have been demanding a pay rise of 24 per cent in addition to the 33.4 per cent they have received over the past four years.
In March, the BMA rejected an offer worth an average 4.9 per cent, which would have seen some doctors earning over £100,000 before they even qualify as a consultant.
They were set to stage a four-day walkout from 7am in what would have been the 16th round of strike action since 2023 – but the union said on Saturday that a last-minute offer had been made.
It includes an average 6.6 per cent pay uplift to be fully implemented by April 2027, reforms to the doctors’ pay structure that will deliver two pay rises a year, more specialist training places and greater reimbursements of mandatory fees, such as professional memberships and exams.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the money will come from existing departmental budgets but has refused to say how much extra the new deal would cost.
Today former Army commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said: ‘It is interesting the government can find money for other causes, such as doctors’ pay, but for defence every pound is a struggle.
Tory shadow health secretary Stuart Andrew Labour have ‘shaken the magic money tree to bribe the BMA’.
‘Dan Jarvis has said today he will find the money to pay for the defence of Britain – if he doesn’t he should also go and the Prime Minister go to the nation via a general election to ask taxpayers if we want to fund it.
‘I’m pretty sure most voters would recognise the primacy and imperative of defence.
‘The position has already cost Starmer a secretary of state and an armed forces minister.’
Resident doctors’ strikes have so far cost the NHS over £3billion in lost activity and overtime payments to covering consultants, with each day of industrial action hitting finances to the sum of £50million.
Professor Frankie Swords, national medical director at NHS England, had warned that the service faced a ‘triple whammy of pressure’ as the planned strike would have coincided with warm weather and the World Cup.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chairman of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, said: ‘We have always been clear that no strikes needed to go ahead if we received an offer appropriate to put to our members.
‘This should not have been left to the last moment, but we hold up our end of the bargain when the Government shifts its position.’
Dr Jack Fletcher, chairman of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, said the new offer was good enough to put to members.
