The justice secretary has faced multiple formal complaints over his dealings with civil servants
The government has said it will not hold talks with junior doctors about pay, and how to resolve the dispute that has led to strikes, until the British Medical Association “moves significantly from its unrealistic position of demanding a 35% pay increase”.
But this morning Prof Philip Banfield, chairman of the BMA council, insisted that 35% was not “set in stone” as its demand. He told the Today programme:
People are tied up on this 35% figure. There is no number that is set in stone here, it is the principle of restoring pay that has been lost in its value.
In order to discuss what that means and how that is achieved, it needs people to sit around the table. This government does not want to sit around the table. It does not want to have any kind of independent arbitration of this because it’s worried that it might cost it money.
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