Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It will be patients who suffer the most. I also urge the BMA to consider the impact on its whole membership, because it is other staff who are left picking up the pieces, and other staff who are tired—literally tired—of working in an NHS that is far from its best. To resident doctors in particular, I say that the cost of this will also be borne by them. There are choices and trade-offs in politics, especially when resources are tight. We can and we will act to deal with specialty bottlenecks. We can and we will act to tackle doctor unemployment, but our ability to do so is undermined, if not diminished, if we are instead paying the cost of this unnecessary, unreasonable and unfair strike action.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement today and fully support the line of action that he has taken. Indications that the majority of doctors in the BMA did not vote to strike makes this strike action even more difficult to understand. The Secretary of State is clearly trying to find a way forward. The way to do that is through finding solutions. Reviewing conditions of work, such as those that see junior doctors working 84 hours within the space of a week, would be helpful. Perhaps this action is not only about pay, but about the expectations of these young people who have life and death in their hands for 13 hours for six out of seven days a week.

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely reasonable point. Pay is important—people have to be able to pay their bills and lead a good life—but so too are their working conditions. I am absolutely determined to work with resident doctors to make progress not just on pay, which we have already done, but on the conditions in which they are working. Given where we are with both of those things—the improvement on pay and the willingness to work together to improve conditions—they are not grounds for strike action.