Health Secretary Wes Streeting has called on resident doctors to abandon plans for strike action, calling it “unreasonable” and “unfair”. He said they’ve received a 28.9% pay rise – the best deal among NHS staff – and warned strikes would disrupt patient care and burden other workers. It comes as NHS waiting lists in England fall to their lowest level in over two years. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
00:00I can well understand why not just resident doctors but other NHS staff, other people across the public sector are frustrated and feeling the pinch because for over a decade they had a Conservative government that year after year devalued and eroded their pay packets.
00:20And that's why I'm really proud that this Labour government came in and has delivered real terms increases for public sector workers across the NHS, across the public sector and for resident doctors in particular they got the best deal 28.9% I think lots of other people looking at that figure and then seeing the announcement of five days of strike action will think that's entirely unreasonable and it's unnecessary and it's also unfair.
00:48Unfair on other NHS staff, many of whom are paid less and would have liked that kind of pay rise and will now be left picking up the pieces if resident doctors go on strikes.
01:00It's also unfair on patients whose care will be inconvenienced and disrupted and we shouldn't underestimate the impact of that and it's also really unfair on the taxpayer as well.
01:11There are lots of things we want to sort out in this country, we're only a year in, we are making progress, don't put that progress at risk with unnecessary and unreasonable strike action.
