AT A GLANCE Junior doctors strike for fifth time

A new cohort of doctors has brought fresh impetus to junior doctor industrial action in the long-running dispute around pay and conditions.

The BMA insists the ‘final’ 6 per cent offer and lumpsum payment of £1,250 made by prime minister Rishi Sunak last month – which equates to a below-inflation

10 per cent uplift – is not credible.

The association is demanding the Government recognises years of pay erosion and commit to restoration of pay towards 2008 levels in real terms. A re-ballot to extend the industrial action mandate in England is open until 31 August.

Thousands of foundation year 1 doctors joined picket lines in England, including Jessica Chan and Georgina Knapman at St Thomas’ Hospital on Friday, 11 August, shortly before The Doctor went to press.

Dr Knapman said: ‘Five or six years ago, medicine was a well-paid graduate job. Now it’s not.’

Dr Chan said it had been ‘nerve-wracking’ and ‘demoralising’ coming into the profession amid a continuing dispute – and has already been asked to work a 69-hour week owing to staff shortages.

Hundreds of doctors rallied outside Downing Street on Friday afternoon.

Addressing his colleagues from the stage, BMA junior doctors committee co-chair Robert Laurenson said that doctors were sick and tired of the Government’s empty rhetoric and false promises over meeting the profession’s concerns on pay.

He said: ‘For 15 years we’ve been told to wait, that it’s “not a good time” that we’re “all in it together”. Now we are standing up for ourselves, standing up for our profession and our future and we’re fighting for pay restoration [and] we will keep going until they get the message.’

The cost of industrial action was recently estimated by NHS Providers at £1bn – roughly the amount it would have taken to restore junior doctor pay. JDC member Arjan Singh said: ‘That money could have helped retain doctors and reduce waiting lists.’

Consultants in England are to walk out for the second time this month, with 48 hours of industrial action scheduled on 24 and 25 August. They have been offered a 6 per cent pay uplift and will strike again on 19 and 20 September if government continues to refuse to agree to talks or present a credible offer.

BMA consultants committee chair Vishal Sharma said 15 years of ‘asking nicely’ had failed because the pay review body is ‘rigged’.

Junior doctors in Scotland were voting in a consultative ballot on whether or not to accept the Scottish Government’s pay offer when The Doctor went to press. The BMA Scottish junior doctors committee recommended members accept the offer, of 17.5 per cent over two years and ‘a path towards pay restoration’.

In Wales, BMA Cymru rejected a 5 per cent pay offer for consultants, junior doctors, and staff, associate specialist and specialty doctors on the 2008 contract. Only the existing multi-year pay deal was offered to those on the 2021 SAS contract. Committees will consider whether to enter a trade dispute with the Welsh Government.

Doctors in Northern Ireland were told they will not receive the DDRB-recommended pay uplift offered to colleagues in England owing to funding shortfalls.

By Ben Ireland