Streeting warns BMA: ‘NHS is hanging by a thread, don’t pull it’

Wes Streeting has warned the doctors’ union they risk collapsing the NHS and installing Nigel Farage in No 10 if they do not back down over strikes.

In a message to the British Medical Association, he warned the NHS is “hanging by a thread”.

Resident doctors walked out of English hospitals for five days in July and the dispute over pay has not been resolved.

The union is also at odds with the Government over online access plans, which they claim could put the safety of patients and staff at risk.

Mr Streeting warned doctors that the alternative to Labour was Reform UK and Mr Farage, who has called for alternative funding models for the NHS and declined to criticise Donald Trump’s claims about a link between paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism.

He also warned Reform’s immigration policies would risk crippling the NHS.

At a Labour party conference fringe event, he said: “What I’ve said to the BMA is ‘the NHS is hanging by a thread, don’t pull it’.

“It wouldn’t be in the interests of doctors, the BMA’s members. There isn’t a more pro-doctor, pro-NHS government waiting in the wings.”

He added: “So I’d say to the BMA: pick a side, because you’ve got a choice here, and there’s a government that wants to work with you, a 28.9% pay increase for resident doctors, the biggest uplift in funding for general practice in a decade.

“We can be adversaries and we can fight each other and we can all lose. Or we can work together.

“And it’s not just the BMA. I’m responsible for one-and-a-half million workers across the NHS, and I’ve got responsibility for all of them, including the people who, at the height of their career, will never earn as much as the lowest-paid doctor.”

Mr Streeting said he was relieved to have been left at the Department of Health and Social Care in the Cabinet reshuffle.

At the Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction event in Liverpool, he said rumours had swirled around Westminster that he might be moved to the Home Office.

When Sir Keir rang him to say he was remaining as Health Secretary, Mr Streeting said: “I just said ‘thank f*** for that’ and then realised I was talking to the Prime Minister of our country and I was on speakerphone and there were other officials in earshot and I felt mildly embarrassed.”

Mr Streeting will continue with his attack on Reform UK when he delivers his conference speech on Tuesday.

He will talk about “how we defend our values against what is, I think, an existential threat to our country, to our National Health Service and to care in this century”.

“That is an existential threat from our political opponents in Reform – and the fact that this is not just a battle between left and right any longer, as it was with the Conservatives, this is a battle between progressives and reactionaries, between patriots and nationalists, between hope and hate”.

He will also talk about the impact of the technological revolution on health and social care.

“Our health service and our social care services need to change with the times, in order to ride the wave of that revolution, rather than see our people victims of it,” he said.