Strikers stop us cutting the NHS backlog, says PM
THE extra investment the Government has put into the NHS means waiting lists would be falling if staff were not striking, Rishi Sunak said yesterday.
The Prime Minister added that he was confident ministers can resolve the pay dispute that has hampered efforts to tackle the Covid backlog.
But he urged junior doctors to get back around the negotiating table and on to hospital wards to help patients in need of care.
Waiting lists now stand at 7.8million, with celebrities and NHS workers signing an open letter earlier this month calling for the Government to act.
Meanwhile, junior doctors in England are in the middle of a sixday strike – the longest walkout in the history of the health service.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, Mr Sunak said: ‘Towards the end of last year we had a period without any strikes in the NHS, and what did we see, we saw the waiting lists fall tens of thousands – by 65,000 – during October.
‘Waiting lists started to fall when you had a period without industrial action, so that actually gives me the confidence that once we can resolve the outstanding industrial action… that we will be able to see waiting lists fall because of the extra investment and resources we have put in the NHS.’
He added: ‘The Government has now reached resolution with every other part of the NHS: nurses,
‘Get back around negotiating table’
midwives, paramedics, consultant doctors, speciality doctors most recently. The only people that haven’t [reached a resolution] are the junior doctors.’
‘We can get the waiting lists down when we don’t have strikes, that’s what the numbers show, that’s what everybody wants to see.
‘That’s what the doctors would like to see too, and I would urge them to try and come back round the table.’
The British Medical Association said junior doctors’ pay has been cut by more than a quarter in real terms since 2008 and it is demanding a path to full pay restoration, which would involve a rise of around 35 per cent.
The Government awarded an average pay rise of 8.8 per cent for 2023/24 and offered an extra 3 per cent following further negotiations towards the end of last year – but this was rejected by the union. At least 1.2million operations and appointments have been cancelled as a result of strikes over the past year, with hospitals declaring critical incidents in recent days as they struggled to cope.
Analysis by the Liberal Democrats showed at least 3,947 cancerrelated surgeries were cancelled in 2022/23 – up 8 per cent on the previous year. Of these, 304 were cancelled due to staff being unavailable or sick, 302 from a lack of beds and 150 because of equipment issues. The figures came from Freedom of Information requests regarding 56 of 137 acute NHS trusts in England. The true figure is likely to be far higher.
Unions yesterday said Mr Sunak’s claims he had settled pay disputes with nurses, consultants and speciality doctors were incorrect.
Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said the Prime Minister was ‘forgetting basic facts’ because the union’s members had rejected his pay offer and remain in dispute.
The RCN belongs to a coalition of health unions who voted collectively to accept the Government’s pay offer, even though RCN members voted against it. The RCN then did not secure a mandate from members for further strike action.
The BMA said its consultants and other specialist doctor members were yet to vote on the latest pay offer.
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins last week said: ‘We have to have the strikes called off, because the NHS belongs to us all. The NHS cannot be switched on and off on whim.’
BMA junior doctors walked out on January 3 and will return to work tomorrow.