The speech made by Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 15 December 2025.
The NHS’s national medical director says:
“This unprecedented wave of super flu is leaving the NHS facing a worst-case scenario”.
This is backed up by the data. On any given day last week, an average of 2,500 patients were in hospital beds—a 55% increase on the week before, and almost double the number from 2023. One hundred and six flu patients are in intensive care, compared with 69 the previous week. There are 1,300 more staff off than in the week before, and the number of calls received by NHS 111 last week was 446,000—8% higher than at this time last year.
It is clear from both the NHS and UK Health Security Agency data that there is a real risk for the NHS and for patients, and it is at this moment of maximum danger that the British Medical Association has chosen to go ahead with Christmas strikes, when they will inflict the greatest level of damage on the NHS.
The BMA said this dispute was about pay, but we gave doctors a 28.9% pay rise. Then it said it was also about jobs, so I offered a deal to halve the competition for jobs to less than two applicants per post. It is now clear what these strikes are really about—the BMA’s fantasy demand for another 26% pay rise on top of the 28.9% doctors have already received. I also offered to extend the BMA strike mandate, so it could postpone this action and go ahead once flu has subsided. The fact that it also rejected that offer shows a shocking disregard for patient safety. Since this strike represents a different magnitude of risk from previous industrial action, I am appealing to ordinary resident doctors to ignore the BMA strike and go to work this week. Abandoning patients in their hour of greatest need goes against everything that a career in medicine is meant to be about.
The entire focus of my Department and the NHS team is now on getting the health service through the double whammy of flu and strikes. We have already vaccinated 17 million people, which is 170,000 more than last year, and 60,000 more NHS staff. We have invested in 500 new ambulances, 40 new same-day emergency care and urgent treatment centres, and 15 mental health crisis assessment centres. The NHS will also be recalling resident doctors to work in emergency situations, and we will not tolerate the dangerous attempts to block such requests that we have seen from the BMA in the past.
I am proud of the way that the NHS team has pulled together through strike action in the past, and I know they will move heaven and earth to keep patients as safe as they can this winter. I am just appalled that they are having to do so without the support of their colleagues in the BMA.
Stuart Andrew
This winter, a serious flu wave and rising respiratory syncytial virus infections are pushing the NHS to its limits. Flu admissions, as we have heard, are up 55% in a week, and RSV cases are rising, especially in older people. However, the Government have failed to prepare, as we pointed out earlier in the year.
In July, the Health Secretary accepted Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advice to expand the RSV vaccine to over-80s, but that expansion seems to have been quietly dropped. Flu vaccine uptake remains dangerously low, with fewer than 30% of some key groups vaccinated. Most worryingly, that includes NHS staff, who are going off sick because of flu, adding to staffing pressures. Delayed discharges are worsening: 19,000 more bed days have been lost this year. Still there is no winter discharge plan, no new funding and no clarity—and today, yes, resident doctors confirmed further strike action this week, which will add pressure to a system already under significant strain. That is why we would ban strike action, but at the same time this Government are literally making it easier for unions through their Employment Rights Bill.
When the NHS is under this level of pressure, families deserve the reassurance that care will be there when they need it, so I ask the Secretary of State: will he now publish the Government’s plan for managing winter pressures, including on delayed discharges and emergency care? Given that he is worried about a double whammy of rising flu cases and a strike, what extra resources is he providing, and if he is not, where is the money coming from? What action will he take to ensure RSV vaccine access for older people, and what will he do to raise flu vaccine uptake in vulnerable groups, particularly in NHS staff? Families are frightened, and some are already grieving. This crisis was not inevitable, but the Government’s failure to prepare has made it much worse.
Wes Streeting
I will ignore the political nonsense about banning strikes and clamping down on trade unions. I will, however, take on directly the charge that we have not prepared for this winter.
We have delivered over 17 million flu vaccinations this season—hundreds of thousands more than this time last year—and 60,000 more NHS staff than last year are also getting their jab. We are on track to deliver the 5 percentage points increase in flu vaccine uptake in healthcare workers, as set out in our urgent and emergency care plan. On children and young people, half a million two to three-year-olds have been vaccinated, which is the same as last year, and 3.6 million school-age children have been vaccinated, which is up 100,000 on last year. We will be going back to schools to do repeat visits in areas where uptake in schools has not been as high as we would like. For care home residents, flu vaccination uptake is 71%. We are on track to meet the RSV vaccination uptake target for 2025-26 in the published urgent and emergency care plan, so we are doing a lot on the vaccination front to prepare.
In fact, on winter planning more generally, we started earlier and did more than ever to prepare for this winter. We had stress-tested winter plans trust by trust. Local NHS leaders ran scenario-based exercises, including managing surges in demand and responding to virus outbreaks to test and strengthen their winter readiness plans, which are now being put into action. We have strengthened access by boosting GP access to keep people well and out of hospital. Through advertising campaigns, new online access routes and more GP practices open for longer hours over the Christmas period, we are making sure more people can be seen closer to home. That matters, because when people can get help early from their GP, they are less likely to end up in A&E.
We are also going further to improve our urgent and emergency care performance this winter. That is set out in our urgent and emergency care plan. We are investing almost £450 million into UEC this winter, meaning: 500 new ambulances on the roads; expanding same-day and urgent treatment centres; providing targeted support to the most challenged trusts; creating capacity and keeping flow moving by sharing weekly data with trusts; encouraging the use of alternative community services; and streamlining in-hospital discharge processes to get patients discharged more quickly from hospital when it is safe to do so, including joining up the NHS and social care, where relationships between health and social care have been improving year on year. If I think about where we are this year compared to last year, there has been sustained improvement. A lot done; more to do.
Of course our job is made harder by strike action. That is why the Government are doing everything we possibly can to get the NHS through this winter. I just wish we were doing it with the BMA, rather than against the BMA.