Government handling of pay disputes compared with Winter of Discontent

The Government’s handling of recent pay disputes with public sector workers is reminiscent of the Winter of Discontent, say doctors.

An ARM motion raising concerns that the Government has ‘no grasp of the real scale of the crisis in either the NHS or social care’ – despite a long-awaited workforce plan being published the previous week – passed overwhelmingly.

It urged the Government to listen to the concerns of frontline health staff and deliver the investment the NHS and its workforce urgently need, saying the Government has offered ‘little of substance’ to improve recruitment, retention and morale.

Tyneside GP George Rae (pictued above), chair of the BMA northeast regional council, tabled the motion.

He said: ‘The gravity of how desperate things have become on the frontline has simply not got through. The Government in England has earned the reputation for absolute abdication of responsibility for the public’s health.

‘Look at how the Government has handled the junior doctors strike and has not come to the negotiating table realistically.

‘Does it not recognise that junior doctors have come to this point of action after years of pay cuts and as a result of utter exasperation caused by working in an NHS which seems to have little respect for its workforce?

‘Does it not recognise the long-standing feeling of junior doctors, and indeed of all doctors, of being undervalued?’

‘Crisis? What crisis?’

Dr Rae compared claims by prime ministers Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson to be on top of issues in the NHS to the behaviour of former Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan who in the winter of 1978-79 was quoted as saying ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ at a time when litter was piling up in the streets and bodies were not being buried.

While it was a paraphrase by a tabloid newspaper rather than anything he actually said, it successfully conveyed the impression that he was out of touch.

‘He didn’t get it,’ Dr Rae told ARM delegates. ‘Where have all the secretaries of state been over the last 10 years? Have they not got it? Have they not realised, until Friday, that there’s a workforce problem? Did they not realise that the waiting lists were long, long before COVID?’

Dr Rae said the number of vacancies and future vacancy projections identified in the Government’s workforce plan showed the scale of the crisis in the NHS.

‘The massive, untenable workload and successive pay cuts are haemorrhaging doctors and nurses faster than we can replace them,’ he said.

‘How much more can actually be squeezed out of a really exhausted workforce? The Government has offered little of substance to improve recruitment, retention or morale and there is no doubt that if we don’t get pay restoration things will get worse.’