Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Jen Craft Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for that contribution, which is really important on two fronts. First, she is absolutely right that this really is not the time for this kind of disruption, and I think the BMA knows that. I do not think that those I am dealing with are bad people. I think they are frustrated with me and this Government—they do not think we have gone far enough—and I am equally frustrated with them, and the fact that they do not recognise how far we have come, and how fast, but that is the nature of the dispute. With the extended mandate, there is an opportunity for us all to park this and, in the worst-case scenario, revisit it in January. I hope, even now, that the BMA will seize that opportunity. I think it would do it the world of good in the eyes of the public, and in the eyes of its members and the wider NHS family.

I am really glad that the Chair of the Select Committee raised the point about international medical graduates and the overseas workforce. The NHS has always been an international employer. We have been so fortunate as a country that, since 1948, people have come from around the world to help us build and sustain a national health service. Without them, it would collapse, and we never want to be a country that closes the door to international talent.

What is extraordinary is that many of those overseas doctors, when they see the competition ratios and compare our approach to that of their home country and other countries, think we have lost the plot. They cannot believe we do not already do this, so I think they will understand what we are doing and why. I hope they will be reassured that international recruits who have given service to the NHS will also be able to apply for specialty places, because we want to recruit and retain great talent, but they will also recognise how this is a game changer for the ratios for homegrown talent. I think they will understand that. I think they will respect that. Not least, I have been at pains as Health Secretary, given some of the ugly rhetoric that has come from one corner of this Chamber, to emphasise that, while some people in this House might tell those international recruits to go home, as far as we are concerned they are home.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

My mum, a former shop steward, always drummed it into me that there are no winners in a strike. Never is that as stark as in the situation we are facing now. There will be healthcare workers in my constituency, already under tremendous pressure, who will be looking at the situation coming up in the next few weeks with dread. That includes resident doctors who will be looking at that uncertainty and wanting some surety as to where they should go. The Secretary of State has been incredibly reasonable and has set out a plan that I plead the leadership of the BMA to get on board with. Call off these strikes to get us through winter and through this difficult period for the benefit of patients and for the whole NHS. Will the Secretary of State join me in echoing that plea?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I hope that point is not lost on the BMA. On the Labour Benches, we are the party of labour. We were created by the trade union movement to represent the interests of working people. That has been our calling for more than a century, since this party was founded. We have shown through our actions, not just our words, that this is a party in government who are committed to defending and extending the rights of working people, to improving pay and conditions, to clamping down on exploitation, and to making sure that this is a Government with and for the people.

The BMA has a willing partner with this Government. I sometimes feel like the Government have changed, the policies have changed and the approach has changed, but the BMA’s tactics towards us have stayed the same. I understand their cynicism about politics and their grievances with the situation they are working in, but I ask them also to recognise the progress we have made when we work together. There is an opportunity confronting them now to make further progress and I urge them to seize it.