Hopes of averting doctors’ strike after ‘constructive’ meeting with Streeting
Hopes are rising that next week’s strike by resident doctors in England will be called off after their leaders had a “constructive” meeting with the health secretary and agreed to hold further talks,The co-chairs of the British Medical Association’s resident doctors committee met Wes Streeting for 90 minutes – longer than the hour they had planned – in Westminster on Thursday afternoon,“We had a constructive conversation with the BMA today and we’ll be having further conversations in the coming days to try to avoid strike action”, Streeting said,He urged co-chairs Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt to abandon the doctors’ union’s plan for the 55,000 resident – formerly junior – doctors it represents to strike from 7am next Friday, 25 July, regardless of the outcome of their next set of talks,It is unclear when they will happen.
He is keen to avoid a renewal of the industrial action over pay during which resident doctors hold 11 strikes, totalling 44 days, during 2023 and 2024.Those strikes, and action by other NHS staff, forced the health service to cancel about 1.5m appointments and cost it an estimated £1.5bn.The BMA has been seeking a 29% rise for resident doctors – a demand Streeting has called “completely unreasonable” after he gave them a 22% rise last year for 2023/24 and 2024/25.
However, today’s talks focused on other issues relating to resident doctors’ working lives, as Streeting has refused to reopen negotiations on the 5.4% pay award for 2025/26 that he has imposed on them.“While we cannot move on pay after a 28.9% pay rise [over the last three years], we are working on areas where we can improve working lives for resident doctors.“Strikes have a serious cost for patients, so I am appealing to the BMA to call them off and instead work together to improve their members’ working conditions and continue rebuilding the NHS,” he added.
Streeting is keen to strike a deal with the BMA that would give it enough reasons to call off the strike but without compromising his refusal to give resident doctors more money this year.The Guardian disclosed on Thursday that he is considering offering doctors a new system of “forgiveness” of the student loans built up at medical school, which can be as much as £100,000, as a way of putting more money in their pockets without big annual pay rises.Hospitals have begun rescheduling outpatient appointments and operations that were due to take place during 25-30 July and arranging for senior (consultant) doctors to cover shifts left vacant by striking colleagues.Resident doctors staged 44 days of stoppages during 2023 and 2024.However, Nieuwoudt warned that there was only a limited opportunity for the talks with Streeting to bear fruit after their “productive” encounter.
“We have a very small window of opportunity over the next few days to avert strike action,” he said after the meeting.Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotion“Talks today have been constructive.They’re a first step.It was a very high-level discussion.We’re looking forward to more discussions to hopefully avert strike action.
No one wants strikes: patients don’t want strikes, we don’t want strikes and the government doesn’t want strikes,“So hopefully the next few days will be very, very useful,”Asked for the deadline to avoid strike action, Nieuwoudt said: “Not long, so time is not our friend at the moment,We have precious, precious few days in order to make sufficient progress in order to avert strike action,Hopefully we can meet at a pace that is sufficient and reasonable.
”In a recent exchange of letters, Streeting told Ryan and Nieuwoudt that while not budging on this year’s 5.4% rise, he would make other, non-pay-related improvements to their working lives.That includes creating more places for trainees to start training in their chosen branch of medicine and making rotational training – during which early career doctors work in several hospitals – less disruptive.In their reply they emphasised their willingness to meet and talk.But they said there had not been enough progress under Labour on issues such as the NHS’s shortage of places for doctors in training to embark on their specialist training and a new system of “exception reporting” of patient safety incidents.
Two UK charities donate millions to Israeli settlement in occupied West Bank
Two UK charities have transferred millions of pounds to an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank with the endorsement of the charities regulator, the Guardian can reveal.Documents show that the Kasner Charitable Trust (KCT), via a conduit charity, UK Toremet, has donated approximately £5.7m to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya, in the Israeli-occupied territory.As the budget of the school increased significantly as a result of the donations, the number of pupils, employees at the school and Susya residents have all increased.Dror Etkes, an expert on Israeli settlement, said: “The school is likely the largest single source of employment in the settlement, and constitutes one of the main elements of the entire settlement’s existence
Hopes of averting doctors’ strike after ‘constructive’ meeting with Streeting
Hopes are rising that next week’s strike by resident doctors in England will be called off after their leaders had a “constructive” meeting with the health secretary and agreed to hold further talks.The co-chairs of the British Medical Association’s resident doctors committee met Wes Streeting for 90 minutes – longer than the hour they had planned – in Westminster on Thursday afternoon.“We had a constructive conversation with the BMA today and we’ll be having further conversations in the coming days to try to avoid strike action”, Streeting said.He urged co-chairs Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt to abandon the doctors’ union’s plan for the 55,000 resident – formerly junior – doctors it represents to strike from 7am next Friday, 25 July, regardless of the outcome of their next set of talks. It is unclear when they will happen
Patients in England’s most deprived areas wait longer for NHS treatment, data reveals
Patients from the most deprived areas of England face longer waits for NHS treatment and make up a higher proportion of those waiting for care, according to figures.Data released by NHS England on Thursday provides a breakdown of the health service’s waiting lists by ethnicity and deprivation levels for the first time. It shows that people in the most deprived areas of England and people from ethnic minority backgrounds make up a disproportionate and growing proportion of those waiting for NHS treatment.An average of 3.1% of patients living in the most deprived areas had been waiting more than a year to begin treatment as of June, compared with 2
Resident doctors’ pay demands won’t get the public on side | Letters
I agree with Wes Streeting that the forthcoming five-day strike by resident doctors in England is “completely unreasonable” (Resident doctors accused of ‘greedy’ pay demands before Streeting talks, 17 July). It is less than a year since their last pay dispute was settled, following a bitter war that lasted 18 months. Patient care suffered again and again.Tactically propagated via targeted social media, this conflict will rapidly spread across borders to the devolved nations. Therefore we in Wales must also anticipate a cruel and chaotic disruption to NHS care by the autumn
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Join the army, work full-time … and now vote: what 16-year-olds can do in the UK
Turning 16 opens up a whole suite of exciting new freedoms. Now, those celebrating their baby steps into adulthood in the UK have another thrilling task for their to-do lists: heading to the voting booth.Thursday marked one of the largest changes to the country’s democratic system in recent times after Labour announced the voting age would be lowered to 16 before the next general election.Scotland and Wales have already made the change for Holyrood and Senedd elections, as well as local council elections, but the move means 16-year-olds will have a say over who becomes prime minister for the first time.For some, the change has been a long time coming, especially considering what 16-year-olds can already legally do:Those aged 16 and 17 can join the British army as a junior soldier, where they will learn survival skills including handling and firing weapons
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