Doctors and Streeting set for showdown strike talks

Wes Streeting is set to hold last-ditch talks with doctors' union leaders in an effort to avoid five days of “highly dangerous” NHS walkouts later this month.

- KATE DEVLIN

Junior doctors in England are set to strike from 7am on 25 July as part of a pay dispute with the government.

Professor Robert Winston, a Labour peer who became a household name through his documentaries on child development, has warned that the “highly dangerous” industrial action risks harming the public’s trust in the profession.

But the new leader of the British Medical Association (BMA) has said that the doctors’ 29 per cent pay demand is “nonnegotiable” and warned strikes could go on for years.

Although discussions are set to take place this week, the BBC reported that the BMA would only halt the strikes if it receives an offer it can put to its members.

Mr Streeting has previously told the union that, after junior doctors received a 28.9 per cent pay rise last year when Labour entered government, the public would not understand why “you would still walk out on strike, and neither do I”.