Health Secretary Steve Barclay criticises junior doctors for ‘walking away’ from talks ahead of strike
Health Secretary Steve Barclay has criticised junior doctors, accusing them of “walking away” from talks over pay and conditions.
The British Medical Association – the union representing many from the profession – has called a five-day strike in July and is demanding a rise of 35% to restore their wages to 2008 levels.
It has also accused the government of refusing to get round the table to negotiate a deal.
But Mr Barclay told Sky News that junior doctors had “refused to move” during three weeks of talks earlier this year, adding: “It was the junior doctors sadly who walked away from the discussions and called a further strike.”
Politics live: Striking doctors ‘walked away’ from talks, says Barclay
Junior doctors went on strike for three days in June, following a four-day walk-out in April and three days in March.
The BMA claims pay has decreased by more than a quarter since 2008 when inflation was taken into account, so the 5% offer on the table was far below what was needed.
And they said many doctors were burnt out from an increasing workload.
But Mr Barclay said the 35% pay restoration demand was not “affordable in the context of inflation and the other pressures” on the economy.
Speaking to Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, the health secretary said the upcoming strikes were “hugely concerning”, with thousands of appointments and pre-planned operations set to be disrupted.
But he put the blame at the door of junior doctors and the BMA, saying they were the ones refusing to negotiate.
“We have [talked to them], we had three weeks of talks… the department agreed to bring in an intermediary,” he said. “But not withstanding [the intermediary’s] excellent work, the discussions that we had with the junior doctors to date, they have refused to move from a 35% demand.
“I don’t think that in the context of the wider economy, [with] the need to get inflation down, that is a fair demand.”
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Sky’s Sophy Ridge questions Health Secretary Steve Barclay over his plans to keep NHS staff and the looming junior doctors’ strike.
Mr Barclay conceded that “both sides need to move” to reach an agreement, and claimed the government were “willing to do so”.
But he said that without the strikes being called off, there was little room for negotiation.
“We have been consistent, not just in health but in all departments, that if people suspend the strikes then we can get round the table and have talks, but at the moment the junior doctors have walked away from the talks,” said the health secretary.
“We were in middle of discussions with them. There were a range of other factors that they have raised with me in terms of annual leave that is often cancelled at short notice, rotas that are changed, some of the wellbeing issues around circumstances in hospitals.
“We are happy to discuss [those issues].”
Sophy Ridge also quizzed Mr Barclay on whether the government would accept recommendations from public sector pay review bodies for wages rises next year after speculation Prime Minister Rishi Sunak planned to block them in an attempt to tackle inflation.
Pay review bodies or PRBs take evidence from across sectors like the NHS and education each year, as well as submissions from government, before saying what wage rises should be introduced for the following 12 months – and they are expected to say healthcare staff should have a 6% uplift.
Amid anger from unions about the figures failing to match inflation last year, the health secretary insisted it was right for ministers to “continue to defer to that process to ensure decisions balance the needs of staff and the wider economy”.
But this morning, he refused to confirm ministers would accept the PRB proposals, instead they would look at them “in the round”.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson was also asked by Sophy Ridge if Labour would accept PRB recommendations if they were in power – with a 6.5% expected bump for teachers.
However, she would not commit to the figure either, saying it was a “complicated” issue due to Conservatives “crashing the economy”.
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Sky’s Sophy Ridge presses shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson on what Labour would do to end teachers strikes.
“I would see that as the starting point for negotiation,” she said. “We can’t get anywhere unless we’re prepared to negotiate.
“I’m not going to come on this programme and commit to a figure, I wouldn’t expect the secretary of state to do that either, that is what will happen during the course of a negotiation.”
World
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead in helicopter crash after charred wreckage found
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous area of northwest Iran.
Rescuers found the burned remains of the aircraft on Monday morning after the president and his foreign minister had been missing for more than 12 hours.
“President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named.
Live updates – Iranian president killed in crash
Iran‘s Mehr news agency reported “all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred”.
State TV said images showed it had smashed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash… unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” an official told Reuters.
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President of Iran killed in crash
The crash happened in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province
As the sun rose, rescuers saw the wreckage from around 1.25 miles, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media.
Iranian news agency IRNA said the president was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter.
Read more:
Who is Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?
Many will be fearing instability after ‘butcher of Tehran’ killed
Iranian TV showed the president on the helicopter during a trip to Azerbaijan
TV pictures from Sunday showed thick fog at the search site. Pic: IRNA
Mr Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader, was travelling back from Azerbaijan where he had opened a dam with the country’s president.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, also died in the crash.
The governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards were also said to have been on board when the helicopter crashed in fog on Sunday.
Iranian media initially described it as a “hard landing”.
The chief of staff of Iran’s army had ordered all military resources and the Revolutionary Guard to be deployed in the search, which had been hampered by bad weather.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to react to the news of Mr Raisi’s death.
“India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow,” he said in a post on X.
A helicopter carrying Iran’s president crashed during bad weather on Sunday.
But who is Ebrahim Raisi – a leader who faces sanctions from the US and other nations over his involvement in the mass execution of prisoners in 1988.
The president, 63, who was travelling alongside the foreign minister and two other key Iranian figures when their helicopter crashed, had been travelling across the far northwest of Iran following a visit to Azerbaijan.
Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash
Mr Raisi is a hardliner and former head of the judiciary who some have suggested could one day replace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Because of his part in the sentencing of thousands of prisoners of conscience to death back in the 1980s, he was nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran as he sat on the so-called Death Panel, for which he was then sanctioned by the US.
Raisi and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
Both a revered and a controversial figure, Mr Raisi supported the country’s security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini – the woman who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly – and the nationwide protests that followed.
The months-long security crackdown killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.
People light a fire during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran, 2022. Pic: Reuters
In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Ms Amini’s death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
The president is seen as a frontrunner to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured). Pic: Reuters
The president also supported Iran’s unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel amid its war with Hamas, the ruling militant group in Gaza responsible for the 7 October attacks which saw 1,200 people killed in southern Israel.
Involvement in mass executions
Mr Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Under the president, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections.
Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine and has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
He successfully ran for the presidency back in August 2021 in a vote that got the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history as all of his potentially prominent opponents were barred from running under Iran’s vetting system.
A presidency run in 2017 saw him lose to Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who as president reached Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
‘Very involved in anything’
Alistair Bunkall, Sky News’s Middle East correspondent, said the president is “a major figure in Iranian political and religious society” but “he’s not universally popular by any means” as his administration has seen a series of protests in the past few years against his and the government’s “hardline attitude”.
Mr Raisi is nonetheless “considered one of the two frontrunners to potentially take over” the Iranian regime when the current supreme leader dies, Bunkall said.
He added the president would have been “instrumental” in many of Iran’s activities in the region as he “would’ve been very involved in anything particularly what has been happening in Israel and the surrounding areas like Lebanon and Gaza and the Houthis over the last seven and a bit months”.
World
Iran president helicopter crash: The ‘butcher of Tehran’ has a fearsome reputation – and many will be fearing instability
Ebrahim Raisi has been one of Iran’s hardest of hardliners, a fanatical and absolute believer in the Iranian revolution and its mission.
If he has died on a mountainside in the north of the country, as looks increasingly likely, it will be a major moment for the country and the region.
It will remove from the Middle East one of its toughest most uncompromising players.
Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash
A man who launched the first direct attack on Israel in his country’s history and a hardliner on whose watch hundreds of Iranians have been killed in the brutal repression of recent women-led protests, Mr Raisi has a huge amount of blood on his hands.
The president is seen as a frontrunner to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured). Pic: Reuters
His fearsome reputation goes back to the 1980s – a period that earned him the dubious soubriquet the Butcher of Tehran.
He sat on the so-called Death Panel of four Islamic judges who sentenced thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience to their deaths during the purge of 1988.
Mr Raisi has personally been involved in two of the darkest periods of Iranian repression. And he was seen as one of the favourite contenders to replace the elderly and ailing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Read more:
Ebrahim Raisi: Who is Iranian president?
Iran helicopter crash: Contact made made with passenger and crew member
His accession to that role would have guaranteed years more of the same… and years more meddling abroad.
Raisi and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
With Mr Raisi as president, Iran has engaged in more and more adventurous interventions beyond its borders.
With him in charge Iran has helped Houthis menace international shipping in the Red Sea; helped Hezbollah engage Israel in a seven-month duel over its northern border; aided militia in Iraq to attack, and in some cases kill, American soldiers; and helped Hamas fight its own war against the Jewish state.
After two years of unrest, economic failure and stuttering recovery from the pandemic, Iran is divided and weakened.
Its government has lost much of its credibility and support because of the atrocities it has meted out to its women.
Few outside the regime and its ranks of ardent followers will mourn a man who has overseen the death, incarceration or torture of so many.
Iranians may dare yearn for less repressive times without him. Outsiders will hope for a less troublesome Iran.
Read more:
Who is Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
But there are plenty more where he came from and the Supreme Leader is likely to find another hardliner to replace him.
The fear will be of instability in the run-up to elections. The government has been undermined by recent events, its Supreme Leader is unwell.
If Mr Raisi is dead, his government will try to secure the succession as quickly and smoothly as it can.
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