THE British Medical Association (BMA) has won an improved pay offer for Welsh hospital doctors following two months of negotiations and 10 days of strike action.

It urged members of BMA Cymru Wales to accept the terms today, which include a 12.4 per cent backdated pay rise for junior doctors for the 2023-24 financial year. 

Consultants have been offered a revised pay scale with “significantly better starting pay, and an additional pay rise of up to 10.1 per cent,” said the union.  

SAS doctors were offered new contracts with between 6.1-9.2 per cent higher pay and an additional uplift for those on closed contracts. 

An industrial action by senior doctors was suspended last month to start negotiations after the rejection in August of a below-inflation 5 per cent pay offer by the government.

BMA Welsh Junior Doctors Committee co-chairs Dr Oba Babs Osibodu and Dr Peter Fahey said: “This offer puts us well on the path to pay restoration.”

BMA Cymru Wales’ Consultants committee chairman Dr Stephen Kelly welcomed the “significant improvements in pay for consultants across their careers.”

Welsh First Minister Vaughan Gething and Health Secretary Eluned Morgan thanked the BMA’s negotiating teams and NHS Employers for the “constructive nature of the talks.”

The Royal College of Nursing Wales hit out at ministers for either  lying or not being able to manage their finances after they claimed there was money in the pot for NHS nursing staff salaries.

Executive director Helen Whyley said nursing staff “are still waiting at the back of the queue … they feel let down and misled by this government.”

The union said it will urgently raise this with ministers, calling on them to address fair pay for nursing now.