Street accuses Health Secretary of ‘favoring’ and ‘trolling’ junior doctors
A while ago, Labour’s shadow health minister responded to a statement by the government’s health minister attacking junior doctors (see post at 17:30).
Wes Streeting told MPs: “The NHS will start 2024 the same way we ended 2022 with a strike.”
He said the strike, the longest in NHS history, had come at the “worst possible time”, with the service already in trouble before the junior doctors quit.
He cited ambulance and A&E waiting times as a key example, saying the NHS was “facing one winter crisis after another as a direct result of the Conservative Party’s failures”.
“Isn’t it true that the Tories have once again sent the NHS into a naked winter and patients are paying the price?”
He said the government “[sat] Please go back and let this harmful attack move forward. ”
He also said Ms Atkins had been “favoring” junior doctors, calling them “doctors-in-training” before the strike began.
“Young doctors may have 10 years of experience under their belt. They don’t expect to be run over by a minister who has only been in office for 10 minutes.”
Mr Streeting also suggested the Prime Minister had “forgotten” that the nurse had a formal dispute with the government.
“Is he so indifferent to our health care services that he doesn’t know? Was he trying to ignore his constituents? Or was he falling asleep at the wheel while driving the country off a cliff?” Was he just another Conservative Prime Minister?
Mr Streeting pointed out that the Prime Minister had spent a lot of time saying the media should ask opposition leaders about their plans.
“Even this Conservative prime minister seems to know that if we want serious solutions to the problems facing this country today, the only place to turn is the Labor Party.”
