Health secretary and junior doctors' leader clash over pay offer

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has accused inferior doctors of being unreasonable by refusing to budge connected their request for a 35% wage rise.

Mr Barclay told BBC One's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme determination needed to beryllium "movement connected each sides".

But Dr Vivek Trivedi, from the doctors' union, appearing connected the aforesaid show, said deals that amounted to a real-terms wage chopped were "driving doctors away".

It volition beryllium the 3rd clip inferior doctors successful England person staged strikes this year, aft concern enactment successful March and April.

Ministers person offered a 5% wage emergence but Dr Trivedi, who co-chairs the British Medical Association (BMA) Junior Doctors Committee, said this would magnitude to "a monolithic real-terms wage cut" owed to rising prices.

"It was wide that aft the authorities offered america their 5%, contempt america going backmost and being creative… they were the ones who wouldn't budge," helium said.

However, Mr Barclay said: "They've refused to determination from the 35%. And I don't deliberation that is simply a just and tenable request for them to take."

He added: "We privation to prosecute with them, we person been doing. It's the inferior doctors who walked distant from those negotiations by calling strikes."

The wellness caput insisted the authorities had already improved its wage connection from what was primitively recommended by the autarkic wage reappraisal body.

Asked what it would instrumentality to resoluteness the dispute, Dr Trivedi said: "We're trying each we tin and are anxious and acceptable to get backmost to the negotiating array - it is the authorities who are refusing to conscionable america there.

"We person budged and are precise blessed to research ways to afloat reconstruct our doctor's wage and we've travel up with a assortment of proposals to bash that."

The BMA says inferior doctors person seen wage chopped by 26% since 2008 erstwhile ostentation - the complaint prices are rising - is taken into account. The national wants a 35% wage emergence to reverse this.

Dr Trivedi said a wage connection which did not reverse this trajectory "would not beryllium just oregon reasonable".

Meanwhile, Mr Barclay was besides challenged implicit the government's pledge to physique 40 caller hospitals successful England by 2030.

He acknowledged immoderate of the projects primitively promised nether Boris Johnson successful 2019 would not beryllium completed by that date. This week the authorities said 8 schemes would present beryllium completed aft 2030 to prioritise 5 different much urgent developments.

"We're being honorable successful saying determination volition beryllium difficulties connected immoderate of the schemes," helium said.

"There's often section factors that request to beryllium worked done similar onshore acquisitions, work redesign… which marque it challenging to implicit those by 2030."

Pressed connected whether each the hospitals would beryllium marque new, helium accepted the committedness covered a scope of gathering work.

The 5 hospitals are deemed astatine hazard of illness due to the fact that of deteriorating factual infrastructure.

A BBC probe past week recovered gathering enactment was yet to commencement for 33 of the government's promised 40 caller hospitals.