Health secretary and junior doctors’ leader clash over pay offeron May 28, 2023 at 9:48 am

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has accused junior doctors of being unreasonable by refusing to budge on their demand for a 35% pay rise.

Mr Barclay told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme there needed to be “movement on all sides”.

But Dr Vivek Trivedi, from the doctors’ union, appearing on the same show, said deals that amounted to a real-terms pay cut were “driving doctors away”.

Junior doctors are to walk out for 72 hours in June after pay talks stalled.

It will be the third time junior doctors in England have staged strikes this year, after industrial action in March and April.

Ministers have offered a 5% pay rise but Dr Trivedi, who co-chairs the British Medical Association (BMA) Junior Doctors Committee, said this would amount to “a massive real-terms pay cut” due to rising prices.

“It was clear that after the government offered us their 5%, despite us going back and being creative… they were the ones who wouldn’t budge,” he said.

However, Mr Barclay said: “They’ve refused to move from the 35%. And I don’t think that is a fair and reasonable demand for them to take.”

He added: “We want to engage with them, we have been doing. It’s the junior doctors who walked away from those negotiations by calling strikes.”

The health secretary insisted the government had already improved its pay offer from what was originally recommended by the independent pay review body.

Asked what it would take to resolve the dispute, Dr Trivedi said: “We’re trying all we can and are eager and ready to get back to the negotiating table – it is the government who are refusing to meet us there.

“We have budged and are very happy to explore ways to fully restore our doctor’s pay and we’ve come up with a variety of proposals to do that.”

The BMA says junior doctors have seen pay cut by 26% since 2008 once inflation – the rate prices are rising – is taken into account. The union wants a 35% pay rise to reverse this.

Dr Trivedi said a pay offer which did not reverse this trajectory “would not be fair or reasonable”.

Meanwhile, Mr Barclay was also challenged over the government’s pledge to build 40 new hospitals in England by 2030.

He acknowledged some of the projects originally promised under Boris Johnson in 2019 would not be completed by that date. This week the government said eight schemes would now be completed after 2030 to prioritise five other more urgent developments.

“We’re being honest in saying there will be difficulties on some of the schemes,” he said.

“There’s often local factors that need to be worked through like land acquisitions, service redesign… which make it challenging to complete those by 2030.”

Pressed on whether all the hospitals would be brand new, he accepted the commitment covered a range of building work.

The five hospitals are deemed at risk of collapse because of deteriorating concrete infrastructure.

A BBC investigation last week found building work was yet to start for 33 of the government’s promised 40 new hospitals.