Medical union balloting 45,000 members from today over strike in March as ministers meet unions in effort to end disputes

Good morning. There are various meetings taking place today between ministers and union leaders representing workers in health, education and the rail industry after Rishi Sunak called last week for both sides to get around the table. This is quite a shift from the pre-Christmas position when ministers insisted it was up to management negotiators to take the lead in talks with unions. At the end of last week it was not clear whether this was mainly a presentational ploy (Sunak wants the government to be seen as “reasonable’”), or whether significant concessions might be in the pipeline, but yesterday, as my colleague Pippa Crerar reports, Sunak hinted it was the latter in his start-of-year interview with Laura Kuenssberg.

But it is quite possible that the strike crisis could get worse before it gets better. The British Medical Association is from today balloting 45,000 junior doctors in England on strike action and, if they vote in favour, a 72-hour strike is planned from March. This morning Dr Emma Runswick, the BMA’s deputy chair, told Sky News that the chances of a strike were “very high”. She explained:

[Health secretary] Steve Barclay’s planning to meet with us on Wednesday but only to discuss a very narrow set of things. He’s talking about the evidence that the government will submit to the pay review body. Unfortunately, they’ve already submitted their remit letter to the pay review body telling us and them that we only should receive 2% next year.

So, that’s another massive pay cut after we’ve had a pay cut this year, and for the previous 15 years. Again, another pay cut on top of the quarter pay cut we’ve already received, so I’m not optimistic … about the meetings, though we will go and we will negotiate if that is an available option to us.

We’re asking for the reversal of that pay cut [over the last 15 years]. So, mathematically, it might even be more and if we have another pay cut this year, it’ll be more again. So, we’re only asking for what we’ve had cut from us back.