Wes Streeting accuses BMA of ‘holding the country to ransom’
Wes Streeting has launched a fresh attack on resident doctors as their strike gets under way, accusing the BMA of “holding the country to ransom”.
Speaking from NHS England’s headquarters in London, where officials are monitoring the impact of the walkout, the health secretary said: “We are doing everything we can to minimise the risk to patients, minimise disruption.”
But he admitted the disruption could not be completely avoided. “I want to be honest with people what we can’t do is eliminate disruption or risk to patients,” he said.
Operations, appointments and procedures have already been cancelled, Streeting added, warning of “real challenges” in the days ahead.
“That is why the prime minister and I are so angry on behalf of patients and other NHS staff who are working hard to keep the show on the road.”
Key events
Zarah Sultana has claimed the new left-wing party she launched with Jeremy Corbyn has already attracted more “sign-ups” than Reform UK’s total membership.
Posting on X, the Coventry South MP wrote:
We’ve reached 230,000 sign ups! That’s more than Reform’s membership. Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf, Richard Tice, Lee Anderson… your boys are taking one hell of a beating. Labour, you’re next.
It follows the launch of what Jeremy Corbyn and Sultana described as “a new kind of political party, one that belongs to you”.
Earlier today, during a visit to a bin strike picket line in Birmingham, the former Labour leader told reporters the party had already attracted around 190,000 sign-ups.
The Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has accused the government of abandoning workers after it announced the Lindsey Oil Refinery is set to shut.
It comes after more than 100 people gathered outside Grimsby Town Hall in protest on Thursday, demanding urgent government intervention to save the plant and protect jobs in north-east Lincolnshire.
The Unite general secretary said the site’s closure has left livelihoods hanging in the balance. “Over a thousand workers rely on the future of the oil refinery, their jobs are now at immediate risk, through no fault of their own,” Unite’s official X account said, citing Graham’s comments.
“If the government fails to act then workers at Lindsey and much further afield will rightly feel abandoned by it.”
Former SNP MP Mhairi Black has confirmed she’s left the party, criticising its stance on trans rights and Palestine.
Speaking to The Herald ahead of her Edinburgh Fringe show Work in Progress, the former deputy leader at Westminster said the “capitulation on LGBT rights, trans rights in particular” had contributed to her decision.
I thought the party could be doing better about Palestine as well.
There have just been too many times when I’ve thought, ‘I don’t agree with what you’ve done there’ or the decision or strategy that has been arrived at.
Black, who did not stand in last year’s general election citing online abuse, said she remains “just as pro-independence” and considers herself “probably a bit more left wing” than before.
Wes Streeting accuses BMA of ‘holding the country to ransom’
Wes Streeting has launched a fresh attack on resident doctors as their strike gets under way, accusing the BMA of “holding the country to ransom”.
Speaking from NHS England’s headquarters in London, where officials are monitoring the impact of the walkout, the health secretary said: “We are doing everything we can to minimise the risk to patients, minimise disruption.”
But he admitted the disruption could not be completely avoided. “I want to be honest with people what we can’t do is eliminate disruption or risk to patients,” he said.
Operations, appointments and procedures have already been cancelled, Streeting added, warning of “real challenges” in the days ahead.
“That is why the prime minister and I are so angry on behalf of patients and other NHS staff who are working hard to keep the show on the road.”
A fresh wave of strikes has been announced by drivers at a train company in a long-running dispute over the sacking of a colleague, PA reported.
Members of Aslef at Hull Trains have voted to continue taking industrial action after months of walkouts. Unions have to ballot members on industrial action every six months.
The union already announced a strike from Sunday 1 June to Saturday 9 August.
Nigel Roebuck, Aslef’s organiser in the north-east of England, said: “Hull Trains has been telling our members that they wish to sort out this issue, but it’s nearly a month since their last meeting with Aslef and the silence is deafening.
“They also have a new managing director who, it appears, doesn’t wish to get involved.
“So trains are cancelled, passengers inconvenienced, and we now have a further mandate for six months to seek a proper and just resolution to this matter.”
The driver was sacked over a safety issue.
The Liberal Democrats have called for an ‘NHS Strike Resilience Plan’, using private hospitals for some treatments.
A spokesperson said that the plan would ensure that the harmful impacts of the strike are kept to a minimum for patients.
Lib Dem hospitals and primary care spokesperson Jess Brown Fuller said:
People across the country waiting for the treatment they desperately need will be disappointed to hear there’s yet more strikes, having already faced so much disruption in the last few years.
The government cannot afford to dither and delay, there is too much at stake- and patients deserve to get the treatment they need when they need it.
That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for an NHS Strike Resilience Plan, to protect patients from suffering. The government needs to pull its finger out and ensure that private hospitals are on standby so that anyone set to receive treatment is not forced to go without and waitlists are not left to soar.
The visit of US president Donald Trump to Scotland is in the “public interest”, chancellor Rachel Reeves has said.
Trump is due to touch down in Scotland on Friday evening ahead of a four-day visit, during which he will meet prime minister Keir Starmer and first minister John Swinney.
His meeting with Starmer is seen as a chance to refine the UK-US trade deal which came into force last month.
Speaking to journalists during a visit to the Rolls-Royce factory near Glasgow airport on Friday morning, the chancellor talked up the importance of the visit.
“It’s in Britain’s national interest to have strong relations with the US administration and as a result of both that long-term special relationship, but actually more importantly, the work that our prime minister Keir Starmer has done in building that relationship with president Trump has meant that we were the first country in the world to secure a trade deal,” she said.
“That has a tangible benefit for people here in Scotland, whether it is people working in the Scotch whisky industry or people working in the defence sector like here at Rolls-Royce, that trade deal means lower tariffs than any country in the world on things that we send to the US.”
Speaking during a visit to a bin strike picket line in Birmingham, Jeremy Corbyn said around 190,000 people had so far “signed up” for the new party launched with Coventry MP Zarah Sultana.
Officials said Your Party was an interim name to kickstart a democratic process to decide on the new party’s eventual title.
Corbyn told journalists: “The launch is Yourparty.uk and so far, as of the last minute or two, 175,000 people had signed up for it, which is enormous.”
As his comments to reporters came to a close, Corbyn was informed that 190,000 people had registered their interest in the party, prompting him to add: “Another 15,000 have signed while we were talking.”
Asked what the new party would do about situations like the Birmingham bin strike if it won power, Corbyn responded: “We would look obviously at the situation of Birmingham city finances but insist that no worker’s wages go down and you restructure the finances accordingly.”
Michael Akadiri, an award-winning standup comedian and resident doctor, has his view on the strikes…
So there was no last-minute intervention by Wes Streeting and his team at Whitehall. Resident doctors in England (formerly known as junior doctors) are on the picket line from 7am today until 7am on 30 July, a full five-day walkout.
And I’ll be joining them, in solidarity. Though I’m a resident doctor by grade, I currently work for NHS England on a freelance (locum) basis, so I’ll be supporting my colleagues by electing not to work on the aforementioned days, despite the sauteed carrot of “enhanced strike rates”.
Whenever doctors are engaged in a public pay dispute, our status as “heroes” is lost to accusations of shirking and self-interest. These attitudes even play out within different generations of doctors.
Discussing money in the sector has historically been taboo. When I was in medical school between 2011 and 2016, I can remember students being reprimanded by established doctors for any suggestion that they were pursuing medicine “to make money”. Those with “pound signs in their eyes” were advised to seek a career in the City instead. There was no need to discuss finances, as the understanding was that being a doctor was a challenging and noble vocation that, while it may never make you rich, would leave you more than financially secure.
You could look to consultants as examples of such financial security. After years of arduous training, they’ve arguably reached the top of their profession, the pinnacle. Many of them are covering for resident doctor colleagues over the weekend so residents can strike safely, reportedly advised to demand up to £6,000 a shift. Some may balk at such fees, but how much would a top lawyer charge to work out of hours?
With becoming a consultant no means a guarantee, debts of more than £100,000 and a rota that can be unforgiving, conditions for resident doctors are challenging. Then you throw in pay – 20% less in real terms compared with a doctor in 2008. Then, potentially, you can understand why morale is low among resident doctors.
Parents and children will from Friday “experience a different internet for the first time” as a result of the Online Safety Act, the technology secretary insisted as he said he had “high expectations” over the changes.
Peter Kyle told Sky News:
The act, as you said, has taken a long time to come into force, so it means the technology companies themselves have seen this coming for a very long time, and had all that time to prepare.
So I have very high expectations of the change that children will experience.
And let me just say this to parents and children, you will experience a different internet really, for the first time in from today, moving forward than you’ve had in the past. And that is a big step forward.
Speaking outside the Bristol Royal Infirmary, Dr Fareed Al-Qusous, 26, a year 3 academic foundation doctor, said the strike was a “last resort”.
“No doctor wants to take industrial action as it’s a form of last resort and I would rather strike zero days,” he said.
“But the most recent pay uplift represents a 1% real terms uplift. At that rate it would take roughly 20 years to restore a 21% pay erosion.
“Wes Streeting said that pay restoration is a journey – we’re willing to take him on that journey, but that journey is far beyond the lifespan of this government.
“A first year doctor, who gets paid £9,000 less than their assistant, gets paid £18-an-hour. We’re asking for them to get paid £23-an-hour, which is an extra £5-per-hour increase.
“It doesn’t have to be in one go, it can be a multi-year pay deal and the strikes can be called off immediately. If you ask the public is a doctor worth £23-an-hour, you get an astounding yes, if anything it’s a bargain.”
Some more images coming in from the picket lines up and down the country…
Patients at St Thomas’ Hospital have voiced their support for junior doctors taking part in the latest round of strike action over pay and conditions.
Jo Irwin, 72, who was attending the London hospital for a blood test before surgery for a hernia, said she had “no hesitation” in backing the walkout.
“I am fully behind the strikes and the public should be as well,” she said.
“Without these doctors I would be dead. They are looking after sick people. I am very angry about it.
“They should get all the money they want – and more than Keir Starmer and his cronies.”
Mohammed Dinee, 42, from Brixton, also gave his backing to the industrial action after being admitted recently with back pain.
“Today I had a physiotherapy appointment – it was fine, no complaints,” he said. “But I got admitted other day for back pain – you could feel it. It was difficult to get an MRI scan.
“They’re strained – being inside St Thomas’, you can see it. I fully support them.”
Peter Kyle also defended the government’s resistance to calls for immediate UK recognition of a Palestinian state, insisting Keir Starmer wants sovereignty “more than anyone else” as part of a political process.
The technology secretary was repeatedly asked why Britain will not follow France in saying it will recognise a Palestinian state.
He told Sky News: “We want Palestinian statehood. We desire it, and we want to make sure the circumstances can exist where that kind of long-term political solution can have the space to evolve and make sure that it can become a permanent circumstance that can bring peace to the entire region. But right now, today, we’ve got to focus on what will ease the suffering, and it is extreme, unwarranted suffering in Gaza that has to be the priority for us today.”
Asked why the UK was holding back on confirming recognition, he said: “Because we believe that statehood is something that is a political process, and it should be part of the political settlement that will lead to a safe and secure Israel and a Palestinian statehood with all the sovereignty that goes alongside it.”
He added: “I don’t want anybody who is viewing this to underestimate our anxiety about what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza right now, and our desire to deliver a Palestinian state.”
Kyle said the debate in the Labour party was over how statehood is reached rather than whether it is reached, adding: “Keir Starmer wants this more than anyone else, but believes it is a crucial step towards delivering the peace and security into the future, and needs to be a negotiated peace within the region itself. It can’t be forced.”
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