'It was a good offer!' Labour MP takes aim at resident doctors after walking away from proposed pay increase: 'We are disappointed'

Georgia Pearce
Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:02:23 +0000

Resident doctors have been scolded by a Labour MP for rejecting the Government's latest pay offer.

Antonia Bance told GB News the latest proposal put forward was a "good offer", and their rejection left her "gutted".

The Prime Minister is giving the resident doctors 48 hours to call off their planned six-day strike, or risk losing 1,000 extra training places.

Sir Keir Starmer says the planned walk out is "reckless", but the British Medical Association (BMA) says patient care "shouldn't be tied to industrial action".

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Reacting to the decision by the resident doctors, Ms Bance told GB News: "We're all absolutely gutted that the BMA doctors committee has turned down the offer that was on the table, without even putting it to the resident doctors themselves.

"It was a good offer, that's the difference. We sit down, we negotiate, we talk through with the resident doctors to try and address their concerns and come up with a solution to them."

The Labour MP revealed that the latest pay offer would have meant a "£12,000 higher salary" for new graduates compared to four years ago.

She said: "What was on the table was an average pay rise for resident doctors of 4.9 per cent this year, adding on to the 29 per cent that they got last year.

"And all of that would have meant that starting pay for new graduates this year would be nearly £12,000 higher than it was four years ago."

Ms Bance expressed her "disappointment" in the British Medical Association and resident doctors for failing to accept their latest offer.

The Labour MP was quizzed by host Nana Akua on whether the BMA's resistance is a result of Wes Streeting's "capitulation" to the doctors when Labour first came into power.

She explained: "When Labour came into power, they immediately capitulated to the doctors and gave in and gave them exactly what they'd asked for, without any real conditions, like, for example, you can't come back and do this in five years or something.

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"That would be a reason why they wouldn't come back - he just gave them the money and people were quite annoyed by that."

Ms Bance responded: "I don't think anyone is in the business of telling working people what they can do with their labour or not.

"People retain the right to withdraw their labour, and I think what happened was that we sat down with the resident doctors, we made a fair set of offers, we tried to address the concerns that they brought forward.

"And to be clear, those are concerns that are grounded in reality. They haven't had a good deal over the last 14 years before we came into office. We need to fix that if we're going to fix the NHS. That's why we put forward this deal."

The Labour MP explained: "This deal would have made sure that UK doctors would prioritise for training places over foreign doctors. It would have provided 4,500 more training places over the next three years.

"These are all things that resident doctors have raised with us that are genuine concerns that need sorting out. We've tried to sort them out and that's why this is so disappointing."

The BMA's resident doctors' committee defended its decision to turn down the offer, pointing to living costs and projections of rising inflation stemming from the conflict in Iran.

Chairman Jack Fletcher said: "We cannot ignore that, thanks to global events, economic indicators now point to years of greatly increased inflation.

"We are simply not going to put an offer to doctors that risks locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave the UK for other countries."