Junior doctors are back out on strike in England today, walking out this morning for five days. The timing of this particular strike is highly political, given medics will return to work just before polling day – but it is also highly pointless: something NHS leaders have been quick to highlight. The election campaign is the one period when no politician can resolve the dispute over doctors’ pay. Rishi Sunak is not going to change his mind and award the doctors the 35 per cent raise they have been demanding, but neither could he if he wanted to because of the election purdah rules. Labour, on the other hand, aren’t in power.
A number of the BMA junior doctors’ committee (JDC) spokespeople have suggested that Labour coming into government would change the way the negotiations went. There is, within the committee at least, a strong anti-Tory sentiment, so it might be appealing to damage the Conservatives further by causing disruption in the health service just as most voters are making up their minds.
Streeting is not in a mood to make doctors’ wishes the focus of his tenure as health secretary
But given the heat warnings that are in place in much of England until this evening, this is disruption that patients and the staff who are still working could really do without. The NHS Confederation, which represents providers of care, warned this week that ‘holding strikes in the middle of an election campaign when no political party is in a position to bring the dispute to a close is a bitter pill to swallow for staff who have to plug the gaps and patients who will have their appointments cancelled or delayed’. Even members of the BMA’s council have expressed concerns that the strike is an ‘own goal’ – highlighting that even within the trade union itself, there are divisions over tactics. This has long been the case, with the council often regarding the junior doctors’ committee as ‘militant’ and in danger of overplaying its hand, which it has done in the past.
Given Labour is – barring an enormous surprise – going to be in government not long after the strike finishes, the JDC will be looking for an out from this protracted dispute before its own members start to grow fatigued with the industrial action and before public sympathy drops much further. Voters have generally blamed the government for failing to resolve the strikes, and that has been Labour’s critique too.
They have argued that they would have got around the table sooner and avoided strikes – though they haven’t given much more of an idea of how they would have done this. Recently, Wes Streeting has suggested that increasing pay would be a ‘journey and not an event’, hinting at a multi-year pay deal as well as more talks on working conditions. That won’t come close to 35 per cent, but it may allow the BMA to save face and claim a victory.
Streeting is not, though, in a mood to make doctors’ wishes the focus of his tenure as health secretary. He has placed much more emphasis on making the NHS work for the consumer, not the producer. In any case, even if he resolves this dispute quickly, he’ll soon find himself embroiled in his rows with the BMA.
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