Resident doctors have "squandered the goodwill" of the government with their "self-defeating" strike action, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has warned. The medics' five-day strike over pay finished yesterday morning but the British Medical Association, which represents them, has not ruled out further action. In a letter to the BMA, Streeting said the strike was "deeply disappointing and entirely unnecessary".
What did the commentators say? Fewer resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, "took to picket lines compared with previous walkouts", said Ella Pickover in The Independent. The "word in the corridors" is that the BMA is "losing support across the NHS and among its own members", said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. History may have convinced the BMA "that the public will always trust doctors over politicians" but the public now seems to be backing "those trying to cut waiting lists more than the strikers who are adding to them".
"A return to the negotiating table had seemed almost impossible," said the BBC's health correspondent Nick Triggle, but following this latest strike, "both sides have shown signs of softening". It has "not gone unnoticed" by the BMA that public opinion seems to have "swung against" resident doctors.
People "close to Streeting" say "he wants to get a deal done", according to Triggle, but there may not yet be "enough common ground": the BMA wants to win a big pay rise, while Streeting "is adamant this is not an option". Instead, the government may offer non-pay-related concessions, such as covering the cost of compulsory exam fees, making rotas and rotations "less brutal" and giving resident doctors "student loan repayment holidays".
What next? Streeting has been playing into "divisions" between the BMA and other healthcare unions to weaken the BMA's hand, said Polly Smythe, Novara Media's labour movement correspondent, in The Guardian. But that tactic also carries dangers. Resident doctors aren't the only ones who can "wreak havoc" on the NHS, said Alexa Phillips in The i Paper. Paramedics are as "unhappy" with their pay offer as nurses, and "hospital consultants are also threatening to strike in the autumn". |