Health secretary says as things stand category three emergency calls won’t be covered during 21 December strike
Here are some more lines from Steve Barclay’s morning interview round.
Barclay, the health secretary, rejected calls for the government to improve the pay offer to NHS staff. When he was asked on the Today programme repeatedly if he was willing to offer more, he replied: “No. We have an independent pay review body that looks at that. That is the position that we have in terms of pay.” When pressed again on this, he just stressed his commitment to the independent pay review process – even thought it was pointed out to him that the government could offer more than the pay review bodies recommend. As HuffPost UK reports in its story on this, Barclay also insisted the dispute was not just about pay.
He refused to defend the decision not to remove the Tory whip from Lady Mone. When asked repeatedly about this on Sky, he just said that this was a matter for the chief whip.
He defended Rishi Sunak’s decision to perform a U-turn on onshore windfarms. Asked about last night’s announcement, he said:
You can see, actually, the fact that the prime minister has taken a very strong stand in terms of the priority of getting inflation down.
I think it’s important that we listen to colleagues, that is our parliamentary process. It’s important that we do these things with local consent.
Barclay said there was no shortage of antibiotics in the country to treat Strep A.
He said an announcement on motor neurone disease (MND) research funding would be made “in days”.
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