Streeting warns doctors’ strikes could collapse NHS – but BMA chief insists walkouts won’t put patients at risk
Wes Streeting has said he is “really scared” for the NHS if the junior doctors’ strike continues next week and warned he cannot guarantee patients will not be harmed as flu cases rise.
The health secretary claimed the flu was causing “probably the worst pressure the NHS has faced since Covid” and admitted the health service would “effectively” collapse “at one minute to midnight”.
Mr Streeting warned numbers could triple at peak, describing the scenes at the hospital as “inexcusable” and insisting the act of attack could have been a “tower-collapsing Jenga piece”.
The head of the British Medical Association has denied patients will be at risk from next week’s strikes, despite new figures showing flu cases have risen by 55 per cent in a week to a record high for this time of year.
BMA chief executive Dr Tom Dolphin said: Independent The NHS is facing a “year-round” crisis that is not specific to winter and insists senior doctors could be drafted in to fill in for junior doctors who are not there to keep patients safe.
The strike is expected to take place from 7am on 17 December until 22 December, after the union accused the government of failing to make “sufficient progress towards a workable agreement on jobs and wages”.
But concerns are growing about the health service’s ability to cope with strikes as flu cases soar in England, where an average of 2,660 flu patients were hospitalized every day last week.
Taking aim at the BMA, Mr Streeting criticized the union for choosing to strike in December, saying “they know this week will be the most painful for the NHS”.
Describing the situation as “pretty dire”, he told LBC Radio: “So if you strike, if you get the flu and all these cars are in the corridors and your demand is rising rather than falling, I don’t think there’s a lever I can pull, I don’t think there’s an amount of money I can throw around, which means I can get on your program and guarantee patient safety next week.”
Downing Street called on the union to reverse its “staggering” plans to strike and “inflict pain” on patients, adding: “Let’s explain what this decision means: colleagues in the NHS will have to cancel Christmas plans to cover shifts, patients’ surgeries will be canceled and the NHS is bracing for the worst in the middle of an unprecedented flu season.”
Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of NHS Providers, warned that the “flu wave” the NHS is facing means the healthcare service needs to be “all hands on deck to care for large numbers of patients”.
Meanwhile, the president of the Academy of Royal Colleges (AOMRC), Dr. Jeanette Dickson said she was “concerned about the impact on patients of five more days of industrial action at this critical time of year” and the organization noted that there were “10 times more patients with flu in hospital beds today than there were two years ago”.
But when asked if he accepted that more patients would be put at risk due to the strain on the NHS at this time of year, Dr. Dolphin said: “No, I mean the NHS is already suffering all the time… We’re stretched and it’s been going on since the summer. So it’s not just a winter crisis, it’s really year-round.”
Referring to the winter flu crisis, he said: “During strike days, hospitals arrange for senior doctors to fill in for junior doctors who are not there.
“Sometimes they will have people do it as an extra shift on their own time, and sometimes they will keep people from doing scheduled care – care can be delayed if hospitals think extra staff are needed… So it will be the same model that has worked for all previous strikes to keep patients safe.”
He added: “They may need to do more, but the principle is still there and it’s still keeping patients safe.”
Asked if he thought no additional patients would be put at risk at this time of year, he said: “Yes, I do, because it’s up to the hospitals to plan for it, to decide where to use the staff they have.”
But Mr. Elkeles disagreed. Independent He believes more patients will be put at risk.
While he said the NHS would “absolutely” do its best to continue operating normally, he warned of the impact of “this tidal wave of flu and the sheer pressure that is now on the emergency part of the NHS”.
“The volume of 999 calls, the number of patients being admitted to hospital is huge, it feels like a moment where you need your whole workforce to come together and have all the staff on duty to look after the large number of patients,” he said.
“It looks like if a significant proportion of the workforce decides to take industrial action next week, that will make looking after all those patients and providing planned care a challenging task.”
Dr. While Dickson said the AOMRC would not comment on the rights or wrongs of industrial action, the organization called on the BMA to suspend its guidance stating that junior doctors do not need to inform their employers about whether they plan to strike due to “significant additional pressure caused by the start of the spread of a particularly virulent flu virus”.
A spokesman said: “If managers are told which junior doctors are planning to take action, this will at least enable them to safely plan for emergency response and perhaps pool resources on a regional basis.”
As a last resort to avoid a five-day strike, Mr Streeting proposed a deal to the BMA proposing to overcome the bottleneck by prioritizing UK medical graduates and doctors for specialist training; an offer the union has agreed to present to members in the coming days.
Under the proposal, a further 4,000 specialist training places will be created and their Royal College membership and exam fees will be refunded.
However, BMA vice president Dr. Shivam Sharma was skeptical of the proposal, saying he found it “difficult for members to accept it” and described it as a “mixed bag”.
Relations between the Labor government and the doctors’ union have become increasingly strained in recent months, with Mr Streeting accusing the BMA of “juvenile delinquency” for planning a five-consecutive day standoff in the run-up to Christmas.
But Dr Dolphin expressed some optimism about relations with Labor, saying the government’s approach to labor relations overall was “a big step change from the previous government” and adding that Labor “recognised the importance of unions”.
He added: “The negotiations have been quite difficult because we differed quite a bit in our starting position and some of the language used was unfortunate, but we understand this is a difficult conversation so that is to be expected.
“I think that will produce better results as long as we can continue to have constructive conversations in negotiating meetings rather than doxxing each other in the media. And I think Labor has the capacity to do that in a way that probably some other governments haven’t.”
But he said if it wanted to prevent further strikes next year the government needed to put forward “a reasonable offer that we can put to the membership”.
“We need a decision on this,” he said. “We have been politely asking for a number of years and now we will move on to industrial dispute on this matter.”
