{"id":504869,"date":"2026-03-31T08:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/504869\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:39:07","slug":"keir-starmer-gives-resident-doctors-48-hours-to-call-off-strike-or-lose-training-offer-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/504869\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer gives resident doctors 48 hours to call off strike or lose training offer | Doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keir Starmer has threatened to withdraw an offer of thousands of extra NHS training posts if resident doctors in England do not call off a six-day strike after Easter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The prime minister has given the doctors\u2019 union, the British Medical Association, 48 hours to ditch its plans for industrial action or the government will pull the current offer from the table.<\/p>\n

Last week, the BMA resident doctors\u2019 committee rejected an offer that would have given doctors a pay rise of up to 7.1% this year, without putting it to members for a vote.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Times<\/a>, Starmer labelled the BMA\u2019s rejection of the deal \u201creckless\u201d and said it \u201cbenefits no one\u201d. He called for the BMA to allow its members to vote on whether they want to accept the deal.<\/p>\n

He wrote: \u201cLast week, the BMA resident doctors\u2019 committee rejected a historic deal. They now have 48 hours to reconsider. For patients, for the NHS<\/a>, and for the doctors they represent \u2013 they should.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deal would have meant another above-inflation pay rise, reforms to pay progression, reimbursements for the cost of Royal College exams and an extra 4,500 additional speciality training places over three years.<\/p>\n

Of these jobs, 1,000 would have opened for applications this month, but \u201cwill be gone if this deal isn\u2019t put to a vote on Thursday\u201d, the prime minister said.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThose measures were not chosen randomly, nor were they imposed from above.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are the result of months of collaboration with the BMA, who engaged constructively throughout. At every stage, we listened to one another, recognising that above all else, we shared those same foundational goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is why walking away from this deal is the wrong decision. It is a reckless decision. And doing so without even giving resident doctors themselves the chance to vote on it makes it even worse. Because the truth is this: no one benefits from rejecting this deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The union, which is to stage a strike from 7 to 13 April, is demanding \u201cfull pay restoration\u201d to 2008 levels, the equivalent of a 26% pay rise.<\/p>\n

The chair of the BMA\u2019s UK resident doctors committee, Dr Jack Fletcher, told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme: \u201cWe\u2019ve been willing and have been talking constructively for the last two months and at the very last minute the government has shifted the goalposts of the pay offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very happy and willing to sit down and talk constructively once again. We\u2019ve made clear to the government what it would take to essentially to get back to where we were \u2013 which was back to before this shifting of the goalposts.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking threats about withholding jobs from doctors and essentially stopping doctors from caring for patients is not a realistic or credible way of ending this dispute \u2013 it will end in a negotiation room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy to sit down with the government at any point to try to negotiate a settlement but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s done by writing in newspapers and issuing threats unilaterally, I think that\u2019s done in a negotiation room in a constructive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the decision not to put the deal to members, he said: \u201cWe discussed this with our committee who are elected to represent our members. Their representatives have considered this offer. We don\u2019t think it goes far enough on pay so we decided not to put this to our members.\u200b\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer has threatened to withdraw an offer of thousands of extra NHS training posts if resident doctors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-504869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}