Wes Streeting, the UK Health Secretary, has urged resident doctors to ignore the British Medical Association(BMA) and to work through the five-day strike due to start at 7am on Wednesday, December 17, 2025.
He made the appeal in the Commons, in response to an urgent question tabled by the Tories about the BMA’s decision to go ahead with the strike after resident doctors clearly voted in favour.
Streeting stated that since this strike represents a different magnitude of risk to previous industrial action, “I am appealing to ordinary resident doctors to ignore the BMA strike and go to work this week.”
“Abandoning patients in their hour of greatest need goes against everything a career in medicine is meant to be about. The entire focus of my department and the NHS team is now on getting the health service through the double whammy of flu and strikes.”
Wes Streeting
He said that, even where resident doctors were on strike, the NHS would recall them to work in emergency situations and would not tolerate “the dangerous attempts to block these requests that we have seen from the BMA in the past.”
This comes as resident doctors in England agreed to strike as planned this week after they voted to reject the government’s latest offer to end the long-running pay and jobs dispute.
Resident doctors, formerly called junior doctors, will strike for five days starting on Wednesday after refusing to accept the deal in a survey by their union, the British Medical Association.
The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, had proposed the deal last week. It would have increased the number of training places to enable early-career doctors to start training in their chosen medical speciality but not increased their pay for the current financial year.
Resident doctors overwhelmingly rejected the offer, by 83% to 17% on a 65% turnout. In all, 35,107 of the 55,000 resident medics who the BMA represents took part in the survey.
The union dismissed the government’s proposals as “too little, too late” to stop the strike going ahead. It will start at 7am on Wednesday and run until 7am next Monday.
In an angry response to the vote, Streeting said earlier that the strike would be a “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous” act that would hit patients and other NHS staff at the service’s “moment of maximum danger.”
The stoppage will pose a challenge to hospitals, which are already grappling with the effects of the early arrival of the NHS’s usual winter crisis, driven by a wave of virulent “super flu.” It will be the 14th strike they have staged since the dispute began in March 2023.
Streeting Accuses BMA Of Seeking Fantasy Pay
Additionally, Streeting accused the BMA of pursuing a fantasy pay demand.
Resident doctors’ salaries have risen by almost 29% over the past three years but they are seeking a further increase of 26% over the next few years.
He noted that it is clear from both the NHS and UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency) data that there is a real risk for the NHS and for patients, “and it is at this moment of maximum danger that the BMA has chosen to go ahead with Christmas strikes, when it will inflict the greatest level of damage on the NHS.”
“The BMA said this dispute was about pay, but we gave them a 28.9% pay rise. Then they said it was also about jobs, so I offered a deal to halve the competition for jobs to less than two applicants per post.It is now clear what these strikes are really about. The BMA fantasy demand for another 26% pay rise on top of the 28.9% they have already received.”
Wes Streeting
The rejection of the government deal is a major setback to both the government and the NHS, both of which are desperate to see the increasingly bitter dispute resolved.
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