Keir Starmer is right to take a firm line in NHS pay talks

Both sides in the shadow pay dispute that is likely to become a real negotiation after 4 July are engaged in pre-match trash talk. The junior doctors are on strike until Tuesday morning, in pursuit of a claim for a 35 per cent pay rise, which they claim merely restores past real-term pay cuts.

Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer, who is likely to be prime minister on 5 July, has told The Independent in an exclusive interview: “We’re not going to pay 35 per cent. We’ve told them that upfront. They know that.”

The Independent disagrees with the junior doctors’ tactics. Going on strike within days of a general election is a political act. Worse than that, it is futile. It puts pressure neither on the outgoing government nor, directly, on the incoming one. It is purely for show. It is unnecessary, and it undermines public support for the junior doctors’ justified cause.

Equally, we support Sir Keir’s firm line in refusing the union’s maximalist demand. He is quite right to say that the union knows perfectly well that it is not going to secure its opening bid. However, it seems likely that a Labour government will have to find a small amount of extra money to settle a dispute that so blighted the final months of the Conservative administration. The union knows that perfectly well, too, and may be tempted to push its luck in the negotiations that will follow the election.

It knows that the pressure on Sir Keir and Wes Streeting, the likely new health secretary, to settle the dispute will be intense. The Covid backlogs are a national emergency, exacerbated not just by strikes but by the recent cyber attack on London hospitals. A new government will be under siege, with crises pressing in from all sides: the small boats; overcrowded prisons; and local councils, universities and water companies all running out of money at the same time.

All of which makes it more important that Sir Keir stands his ground and drives a fair bargain with the junior doctors. He was only a teenager at the time, but historians can remind him how significant and disastrous it was when Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979 and immediately agreed a big pay rise for public sector workers. That triggered another round of inflation and caused greater economic pain later.

Fortunately, Sir Keir seems well aware of the dangers of setting off a chain reaction of public sector pay claims beyond the junior doctors. He, Mr Streeting and Rachel Reeves, the likely chancellor, seem prepared to grasp the nettle of keeping pay settlements within reasonable bounds. They are all aware of the danger that escalating pay would pose to the fragile finances of a new government.

More than that, Mr Streeting understands the need for reform in the NHS, and he has given some serious thought to it while a succession of more or less hapless Conservative secretaries of state have been bumping from one crisis to another.

If he is to have a chance of driving through some of the transformational policies that could make a difference in the next parliament, he cannot afford to lose control of NHS pay.

This may seem a harsh message for NHS workers to have to hear, after so many years of low pay, hard work and often poor management, but it is in their interests in the longer run that the health services’ finances are sustainable. Sir Keir is right to make it clear that big increases in public spending are not in prospect.