Steve Barclay criticises ‘increasing militancy’ of NHS strikes as consultants walk out
Health Secretary Steve Barclay has criticised the “increasing militancy” and “politically” motivated strikes, and said that is why new legislation to curtail walkouts is being introduced.
Mr Barclay was speaking as consultants took industrial action today, with junior doctors set to join them tomorrow in the first joint strike in NHS history.
The government is consulting on adding requirements for medical staff to provide minimum service levels during strike days, adding to the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act passed earlier this year. This legislation introduced minimum service levels for sectors like rail workers.
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Speaking to Sky News, Mr Barclay said that the “Christmas Day” service levels provided on strike days do not “get the balance right”.
He said: “And we’ve seen this escalation increasing militancy, a desire politically to time strikes, including with the Conservative Party conference to refuse exemptions that have been agreed locally by their own representatives, as we saw in some cases in August.
“And also it’s very difficult for the NHS leaders to plan if they don’t know until the last minute what exemptions are going to be in place or not.”
Junior doctors, who are striking during the governing party’s conference, are calling for “pay restoration” to 2008 levels, equivalent to a 35% rise. Consultants are looking for an above-inflation pay rise.
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Dr Tom Dolphin, a member of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, told Sky News: “If you bring in the legislation to try and crush a very legitimate dispute like this, it doesn’t end the dispute, it just suppresses it and saves up problems for later.”
Labour has pledged to repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act.
Mr Barclay said: “We’ve accepted in full the recommendations of the independent pay review body.
“That means a junior doctor starting in the wards this summer will be getting a pay rise of up to 10.3%. The average for junior doctors is 8.8%, which is, I suspect, more than many of your viewers themselves are receiving.
“We also responded to the BMA’s number one ask, which was for very significant changes to pension taxation, which the government has agreed to, which is an extremely generous uplift.
“But we also need to be fair to other workers, other the workers across the public sector in terms of how we bring inflation down and manage the costs of that, whether that’s in our armed forces, our teachers elsewhere within the NHS.”
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Consultants are walking out in a long-running dispute over pay on Tuesday and Wednesday this week as well as on 2, 3 and 4 October.
Junior doctors, who have held 19 days of strike action since March, will walk out on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week, and on 2,3 and 4 October.
The Royal Navy will get 25 new warships – and could get three more – as the government indicates where its planned rise in defence spending will go.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News there are 28 new ships and submarines in the design or construction stage at the moment for the UK’s armed forces.
He clarified that 22 ships are “already in the system” – but there is less clarity over six new warships he announced for the Royal Marines today.
The defence secretary said that the government is committing to three of the new “versatile” ships for the Marines, “and then possibly another three as well”.
He said this is a “very, very large shipbuilding programme, a lot of warships, the golden era of shipbuilding here”.
Mr Shapps added: “It’s all possible because just last month we agreed as a government to spend 2.5% of our GDP on our defence sector because we think it’s very, very important to make sure that those who would seek to do us harm are put off, that they are dissuaded because they can see that we’re serious about our defence.”
Labour has pledged to reach 2.5% of GDP on defence spending when economic conditions allow it, while the Conservatives have said they would reach that number by 2030.
But defence spending fell in the early years of the Conservative government, which has been in power for 14 years, and spending was not boosted when Ukraine was invaded in 2014 or 2022.
Mr Shapps accused Labour’s defence plan of posing a danger to security
Mr Shapps said the Tory pledge is different to Labour’s because the Conservatives have “set out a timeline”.
“We’ve also said how we would go about largely funding this, and that’s by reducing the size of the civil service, which is much bigger than it was before COVID,” he said.
“We want to get it back down to the size it was before and use that money to spend on defence.
“I have to say, as defence secretary, with everything that I know in this role, that I think that the Labour position presents a danger to this country because it will send a signal to our adversaries that we’re not serious about our defence if we won’t set out that timetable.”
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Labour’s shadow work and pensions minister Alison McGovern said she is “sceptical” about the Conservatives’ claim about how they will fund the spending rise.
She said Labour has had to pledge the rise for when the economy allows “because of what the Conservative Party have done to our economy” – as she accused Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak of implementing “big unfunded tax cuts”.
Ms McGovern added: “I think everybody would expect Rachel Reeves as the shadow chancellor to say, well, we will make our plans when we’ve got access to all of the books, all of the details of Ministry of Defence spending.”
Mr Shapps said the government did not spend as much on defence previously because countries such as China, North Korea, Iran and Russia were not such a threat.
The defence secretary added: “We were living in very, very different times.”
He said the government has also added £24bn to the defence budget over the past couple of years and the UK is “by a country mile the largest spender on defence in Europe, with the second largest in NATO after only the US”.
HMS Bulwark will not be scrapped before its end of service date. Pic: PA
Discussing the UK’s current fleet, Mr Shapps said sister ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark are due to come out of service in 2033-2034 but the defence secretary said they will not be scrapped before that.
Albion and Bulwark are currently used as the Royal Navy’s landing platform docks to transport the Royal Marines.
Mr Shapps also announced HMS Argyll and HMS Westminster, two frigates with a combined service of 63 years, are to be retired, with HMS Argyll sold to BAE Systems to be used to support apprentice shipbuilder training.
The new ships being built include Type 26 and Type 31 frigates in Scotland, Astute and Dreadnought submarines in Barrow-in-Furness, and Fleet Solid Support ships in Belfast and Devon.
The regulator reported the firm voluntarily improved its practices after the CFTC’s civil suit with Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao.
If the Justice Dept. prevails in the case against the cryptocurrency mixer, internet service providers and the post office may also be liable to transmitter requirements, they said.
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