In setting preconditions for negotiations with “junior” doctors over their long-running and increasingly acrimonious pay dispute, the government seems to have forgotten one of the primary lessons of the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Namely, if you set preconditions, these become the main point of contention rather than the substance, and usually prevent even beginning the very talks needed to resolve disputes.
People said to Tony Blair’s government that bringing peace to Northern Ireland was nigh impossible after more than seven centuries of conflict. Yet it was achieved. People said to me that getting Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to become the joint heads of Stormont self-government would never happen. Yet it did. And one of the key reasons was that we persuaded both parties to talk rather than block talks from even starting.
Frankly, settling this doctors’ pay dispute in England would be simple by comparison, if only ministers would be less dogmatic and more flexible, including lifting their preposterous ban on talking until their employees stop exercising the only leverage they have: to withdraw their labour. I haven’t yet met a doctor – or, for that matter, a nurse, ambulance worker, teacher, postal or rail worker – who is keen to strike when they lose pay and let down the people they serve.
Just look at the dire consequences of Israelis and Palestinians both insisting for years upon rigid preconditions before they get around the table – if the lesson from ministers’ own back yard wasn’t so blindingly obvious.
Peter Hain
Labour, House of Lords
• Perhaps the striking doctors would settle for the 32% increase MPs have received since 2010.
Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
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