Wes Streeting: Doctors – Work With Us or Lose
Wes Streeting: BMA’s strike tactics are a self-defeating gamble
The health secretary urges doctors too abandon industrial action and work with the government to rebuild the NHS.
All I ask of the BMA is two things. The first is to drop this unnecessary and unreasonable rush to strike action. It harms doctors, it harms patients and it is indeed fundamentally self-defeating, as it leaves the NHS with less money to address the issues that doctors care about. the second is to recognize that this government has a responsibility to all NHS staff and, above all, to patients. We can’t fix everything for everyone everywhere all at once.
Labor didn’t break the NHS, nor did the doctors. Patients are looking to us to work together, as a team, to get thier NHS back on its feet and build an NHS fit for the future. The past 12 months has shown what this government and the NHS can achieve when we pull together. Waiting lists are at their lowest levels in two years and it feels like the NHS is finaly moving in the right direction.
It should be clear to the BMA by now that it will lose a war with this government. It’s not too late for us both to win the peace.
Wes streeting is secretary of state for health and social care
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section,please click here.
