Streeting says NHS ‘coping’ during resident doctors’ strike but faces difficult recovery over Christmas – UK politics live

Trevor Phillips points to Labour’s dire poll numbers (Reform is consistently the top party and Labour seems to be shedding votes to the Green party to its left, which is gaining momentum under its leader Zack Polanski).

Turley said people are “rightly” impatient for change but insisted it takes time for the government to deliver this.

She points to the employment rights bill, which finally become law at the end of last week, 18 months on from Labour’s landslide election victory.

The bill, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales, will give workers access to sick pay and paternity leave from the first day they start their job and includes extra safeguards for pregnant women and new mothers.

As my colleague Jessica Elgot notes in this story, the struggle to pass the law, which faced significant opposition from the Conservatives and business groups, meant the government made a number of concessions to secure its passage.

Trade unions agreed earlier this month to remove day-one rights to unfair dismissal from the package of reforms, in return for the lifting of the compensation cap, to get the bill through parliament in time to start implementing new rights from April.

Turley said Labour has delivered five million extra NHS appointments in its first year in government but admitted that public services have been on “their knees” so tangible change will take time to filter down to the members of the public.

“Next year, [people] will really start to see and feel more money in their pockets, better public services when they’re looking for an appointment with the doctor, the streets and the neighbourhoods looking better and better. And that change takes time,” Turley said.

We have some comments given by the Labour party chair Anna Turley to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning. He asked her if Keir Starmer is incapable of taking “tough decisions until it’s too late”, something the prime minister said to Boris Johnson in 2020.

Turley defended the government’s record, saying it has “stabilised” the economy after “inheriting an absolute wreck” from the previous Conservative administration.

Turley also pointed to giving wider access to free school meals in England.

The government announced expanded FSM eligibility from September 2026, allowing all children from households receiving universal credit benefits to receive free lunches. Currently those with a net earned household income of below £7,400 a year are eligible.

But the expansion of free school meals will initially benefit far fewer children in England than claimed, according to analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

In this analysis piece, the Guardian’s health policy editor, Denis Campbell, looks at the history of these strikes and considers how likely it is for a settlement to be reached after the 14th walkout by resident doctors in a long-running pay dispute. Here is an extract:

Streeting says the British Medical Association is being unreasonable; the BMA, the doctors union, blames him for not rewarding medics properly for their vital work.

After eight strikes under the Tories and now three under Labour, the prospects of a settlement look as distant as at any point in the last 33 months. “At this rate, this is going to drag on and on and on all next year unless something changes. It’s never-ending,” said one NHS official.

His comments reflect the beleaguered mood in a service that yet again has had to cancel tens of thousands of appointments and operations, ask senior doctors to cover more junior colleagues’ shifts and plead with the public to come to A&E over the next five days only if absolutely necessary.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has said he is worried about how the NHS will recover in the days after the resident doctors’ strike, which began at 7am on Wednesday.

Resident doctors (the new name for junior doctors) will return to work at 7am on Monday, having gone on strike after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) rejected a fresh offer from the government.

The BMA asked for a long-term plan to increase pay and properly compensate for years of below-inflation rises, and wanted new training places to be created.

The latest offer from the government 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.

Streeting said the NHS, which is under intense strain due to the usual winter pressures, “is coping” during the strike, but admitted he was concerned about the coming days.

“The period that worries me more is the post-strike period when we have to try and recover the service. That now falls at a time of year which is the NHS’s busiest,” the health secretary told the Observer.

On Friday, Streeting said he wanted to end the dispute and that “we will get around the table with them again in the new year”, but insisted he has a responsibility to all NHS staff.

“I don’t think that doctors are selfish and don’t care about nurses and other healthcare professionals, but the BMA’s position can be quite hardline and uncompromising,” he added. We will have more on this story, and other political developments in the UK, shortly.