Labour confident of ending doctors’ strikes after secret talks

Labour is increasingly confident it can reach a pay deal with doctors in England to end strikes if elected after recent meetings with the main medical union and a separate settlement in Wales was agreed on Friday.

Meetings between shadow health secretary Wes Streeting and the British Medical Association in recent weeks, including once during the campaign, have raised hopes that a deal can be reached to end the two-year industrial dispute, people close to the discussions said.

On Friday, BMA members in Wales voted overwhelmingly to accept a government offer of an additional 12.4 per cent pay for junior doctors in 2023-24 — echoing terms of an agreement reached in Scotland last year.

Labour officials believe a similar deal that falls below doctors’ 35 per cent pay increase demand can be struck in England if it wins power in next Thursday’s general election.

The Scottish deal came on top of a smaller wage increase last year, and demonstrates that unions are open to a multiyear pay agreement, people close to the discussions said.

Labour offering a one-off bonus or an agreement to raise doctors’ pay over several years could finally break the deadlock that has seen medics strike 11 times, most recently this week, the people added.

“An escalator to pay-restoration over several years could be the thing that unlocks this,” one person close to the talks said.

Labour officials insisted that these meetings were not formal negotiations or talks.

Streeting said: “If we win next week, then I will call the BMA junior doctors committee on day one and set up negotiations as a matter of urgency.”

He added: “Rishi Sunak would rather scapegoat junior doctors than solve the strikes. There weren’t any national NHS strikes in 13 years of the last Labour government.”

The BMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Labour is wary that a deal with doctors could open the “floodgates” to a wave of demands from other trade unions.

“We know whatever they give the junior doctors will be seen as a benchmark for everyone else,” said one senior union figure.

The party faces several public sector pay negotiations if it takes office after the election of July 4.

Senior Labour figures have warned unions not to make “unreasonable” demands on public sector pay if the party wins next week’s general election given the “difficult financial inheritance” facing the next administration.

One member of the shadow cabinet said: “Everyone has been crystal clear, everybody, people heading big spending departments have been clear, Rachel [Reeves] has been clear, we can only do what we can afford.”

He added: “We need to grow the economy so we can give Britain a pay rise, not give everyone a pay rise and then grow the economy.”

Unions are worried that these fiscal constraints, and the focus on ending the doctors’ dispute, will lead Labour to delay other public sector pay talks into the autumn. 

Millions of workers will already be overdue a raise by the time the new government enters office. Pay deals that were reached to resolve a wave of public sector strikes last year ran out in April. 

Reports by the pay review bodies that advise on salaries for teachers, NHS staff, police, prison guards, senior civil servants and the armed forces are sitting on ministers’ desks — and their recommendations for 2024-25 are likely to be much less generous. 

Unions are warning Labour that they will fight any attempt to limit this year’s pay deal to the minimum needed to keep pace with inflation — and will press for a firm commitment to restore public sector pay over the course of the parliament to the real-terms level it was at in 2010. 

This could be a much bigger financial commitment. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates average public sector pay was 2.5 per cent lower in real terms at the end of 2023 than in 2010 — a period in which real private sector pay increased by 4 per cent. But many professionals fared worse: the IFS estimates average real-terms pay fell 10 per cent for teachers, 6.5 per cent for nurses and 15 per cent for doctors between 2010 and 2023.