Wes Streeting

Wes Streeting

Labour — Ilford North

Speaking in the House of Commons on 10 July 2025

Debate

Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Contribution

In all honesty, I am afraid I cannot give my hon. Friend that assurance. NHS finances are precariously balanced. We have been relative winners across the Budget and the spending review set out by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but we are asking a lot of the system. As well as the progress and improvements we want in the NHS, we inherited a lot of mess to clean up, and that will take time and resource. Every penny spent on the price of failure through strike action is a penny that could have been spent on driving improvements in the service—improvements for patients and for staff—and on creating the jobs and opportunities that mean doctors do not graduate into unemployment and that mean resident doctors can progress into specialty training posts. That is why I say clearly and unequivocally to the BMA that if this strike action goes ahead, with all the costs, pain and misery that will follow, it will not just be patients—or, indeed, this Government—who suffer, but the BMA.

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