Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My noble friend rightly refers, as I did earlier, to the training bottleneck. The Secretary of State was glad to acknowledge the need to tackle training. While he felt that there was no point on pay to be accepted, he certainly felt that the BMA resident doctors committee had a good point on jobs. To be honest, that is why it is so disappointing to be where we are today.

I will pass on my noble friend’s generous comments to the Secretary of State. He offered to introduce emergency legislation in the new year to prioritise UK medical graduates and other doctors with significant experience of working in the NHS in speciality training posts. That would have made a huge difference, but it has been rejected. He also offered to increase the number of training posts over the next three years, from the 1,000 that was originally announced to 4,000, bringing forward 1,000 of those training posts to start next year—that would have made a huge difference. I could go on, but I have made my point.

I agree with my noble friend’s point about acknowledging the role of nurses. In fact, if my noble friend will allow me, I will go further: we are talking about the whole healthcare team. That is another point to the issue on pay: while the BMA doctors committee continues to press for a pay deal far in excess of anything that anyone else is getting, the impact across the NHS, both on staff and on services, continues to be under threat—and we cannot allow that.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, as a doctor, I feel that a doctor withdrawing or withholding services from a patient is dishonourable and unethical—full stop. I find no reason that I can support for a doctor to withdraw their services, because their patients are trusting them with their lives. As far as I am concerned, junior and senior doctors should never go on strike, whether or not the issue with pay is justified—that is a separate issue; there are other ways to discuss and handle that. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, about what should happen now, junior doctors or resident doctors, or whatever they call themselves, should go back to work and not go on strike—not now and not ever.

There is a separate and long-standing issue with training, which has been referred to. Some years ago I reviewed medical training and was chairman of the Specialist Training Authority. There is a need now to review doctors’ training completely, particularly postgraduate training. It is not sufficient to allow for more training posts—that does not solve the issue. What is required is a complete review of the training of speciality doctors. I hope that the Secretary of State, in his discussions, can make that offer and set up a review. I have no reason whatever to support the junior doctors’ strike.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Lord is an honourable man, as we all know in your Lordships’ House. I heard his comments on how he sees withdrawing labour in this regard, and I hope they are heard more widely. He makes a good point about reviewing training. Unfortunately, we are currently in the position of having made an offer that was rejected. The offer we made is not going ahead, so I cannot give the commitments that the noble Lord might like. We will deal with the strikes in the first instance, as I know noble Lords would expect. I am sure that if we ever get back to a constructive discussion, the issue of a review could be put forward, as the noble Lord suggested.