Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that accusations that the Government changed the deal with resident doctors at the last minute are ‘categorically untrue'.

Writing to the BMA resident doctors committee yesterday, Streeting said the latest round of strikes – which finished today after six days – were ‘unnecessary and unreasonable'.

The resident doctors union accused the Government of changing the deal at the last minute from a one- or two-year offer to a three-year deal.

Streeting said he was ‘surprised and disappointed' by the BMA's accusation and insisted it was ‘categorically untrue.'

‘While I appreciate the preference of your officers was that nodal point reform should be implemented over two years, rather than three, the Government was clear from the outset that we expected any deal to be over a three-year period, and you agreed to enter negotiations on that basis,' he wrote.

‘Resident doctors had a 28.9% pay rise in the first weeks of this Government. There's a deal on the table for an average 4.9% pay rise for this year which increases to 7.1% for some of the lowest paid doctors,' Streeting added in a statement this morning.

In a statement on X this morning, Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the resident doctors committee, said: ‘I want to get a deal done that works for all parties, but we can't work with an offer that both we, and our representative resident doctor committee colleagues, do not see as credible.'