Preconditions set by ministers on talks have obscured the substance of the dispute, writes the Labour peer Peter Hain, while Dr John Doherty suggests a reasonable offer for striking doctors
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.
