FURTHER junior doctors’ strikes could be on the cards if Health Secretary Wes Streeting “overpromises and underdelivers” next year, a leading medic indicated today.
Junior doctors in England have voted to accept a pay deal after staging 44 days of strikes since October 2022.
The doctors had taken industrial action after suffering more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts.
Just 66 per cent of the doctors, represented by the British Medical Association, voted to accept the deal, which offers an average pay increase of 22.3 per cent over two years.
Junior doctors’ pay will increase at an average of 4.05 per cent, on top of their existing pay award that averaged 8.8 per cent for 2023/24. This will be backdated to last April.
Doctors still remain 20.8 per cent behind in real terms compared to doctors in 2008, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.
BMA junior doctors committee co-chair Dr Robert Laurenson told LBC radio: “The sentiment on the ground, from what I’ve been hearing, is that there is no security or certainty for the future.
“Our doctors need that security and that certainty for the future, which is why we’ll be having to look at April next year, the beginning of the new financial year, towards the pay review body’s recommendation to make sure that we maintain that pace towards pay restoration.
“If the pay review body does its job and respects and understands that medicine is no longer an attractive career, as it once used to be, and that it begins to try to fix the retention issues that we have, then there will be no need for further strike action.
“But if, as we see over the last 14 to 15 years, there’s more pay erosion, with real-terms pay cuts, I’m afraid we’ll have no option but to go back into dispute, because Mr Streeting would have overpromised and underdelivered.”
The government has also agreed that from today, junior doctors will be given the title of “resident doctor” to reflect their expertise after the BMA voted for a motion on the matter last year.
Mr Streeting said: “This marks the necessary first step in our mission to cut waiting lists, reform the broken health service and make it fit for the future.”
