This post was originally published on this site.
# Health Secretary and BMA Trade Blame Over Collapsed Pay Negotiations
Wes Streeting and the British Medical Association have engaged in a bitter dispute over who is responsible for the breakdown of recent pay discussions, with the health secretary leveling charges of hypocrisy at the doctors’ union.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Streeting drew attention to a stark contradiction in the BMA’s position, pointing out that while the organization had rejected the government’s pay offer of 4.9% as insufficient, it was simultaneously offering its own employees a raise of just 2.75%, citing financial constraints as justification.
The health secretary questioned how the BMA could justify turning down a 4.9% offer on affordability grounds from the government while applying that same logic to limit its own staff to a significantly lower settlement.
Streeting estimated that each day of strike action carries a price tag of approximately £50 million for the health service. He further outlined the broader financial implications of meeting the BMA’s demands in full, stating that restoring pay to 2008 levels in line with RPI inflation measurements would cost roughly £3 billion annually for resident doctors alone.
The health secretary warned that granting such terms would inevitably prompt similar demands from other NHS workers, potentially driving the total bill to around £30 billion per year — a figure he noted surpasses the entire annual budget of the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for funding the country’s criminal justice system.