Junior doctors in England are to strike again next month, as the government continues to refuse to negotiate in the long-running dispute over pay.
The four-day strike, organised by the British Medical Association, runs from 7:00am on Friday 11 August until 7:00am on Tuesday 15 August. It will be the fifth consecutive month that junior doctors have walked out.
Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, said: “It should never have got to the point where we needed to announce a fifth round of strike action. Our message today remains the same: act like a responsible government, come to the table to negotiate with us in good faith, and with a credible offer these strikes need not go ahead at all.
“The prime minister has told us that talks are over. But it is not for Rishi Sunak to decide that negotiations are over before he has even stepped in the room. This dispute will end only at the negotiating table. If the PM was hoping to demoralise and divide our profession with his actions, he will be disappointed.”
The Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) has confirmed that its junior doctor members will strike alongside the BMA.
Junior doctors strike
The government is giving junior doctors a 6% pay rise this year plus a £1,250 lump sum and has said that is the final settlement and there will be no more talks.
The BMA has asked for a 35% pay rise to restore pay to 2008 levels after a series of below-inflation pay rises, but has acknowledged that if the government matched in England doctors’ pay rises offered in Scotland.
Junior doctors in Scotland are currently voting on a pay offer that comprises a 12.4% pay rise for 2023-24, on top of the 4.5% increase awarded in 2022-23.
In July’s junior doctors’ strike, which lasted five days, NHS England recorded 102,000 cancellations of acute inpatient and outpatient appointments. At the peak of the action, 20,300 staff walked out.
More than 822,000 appointments have now been cancelled during eight months of NHS industrial action in England, but this number does not include the impact of the current action organised by the Society of Radiographers, which ends tomorrow.
Speaking before today’s strike announcement by the BMA, Miriam Deakin, director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, said: “Ninety per cent of people see a radiographer for acute diagnosis or treatment, including in A&E, cancer care and maternity services. The impact of this strike therefore cannot be underestimated – patients will be hit hard.
“This walkout marks the end of the most disruptive fortnight of strikes in the history of the NHS and will add to the snowballing ramifications of industrial action since December. The fact that this strike is going ahead also shows that some staff still feel dissatisfied with pay and working conditions despite the recent Agenda for Change pay deal.”
The Royal College of Nursing remains in dispute with the government having rejected the Agenda for Change pay deal, but the union has failed to reach the threshold for further strike action.
Deakin added: “Trust leaders understand why some staff have felt pushed to strike after years of below-inflation pay lifts. For many of them, this will have been a hard decision to take. The government and unions must find a way to avert more strikes.”
The BMA co-chairs added: “Consultants, along with our specialist and associate specialist colleagues, have covered crucial services during our strikes and those same consultants were also on their own picket lines last week. Mutual solidarity has been on display at hospital picket lines up and down the country: this is a profession united in its refusal to accept yet another pay cut.
“Junior doctors are not going anywhere however much Government might wish we would. The facts have not changed: we have lost more than a quarter of our pay in fifteen years and we are here to get it back.”
Consultants are also staging fresh strike action next month, on 24-25 August 2023.
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This week, a survey of general practitioners in England found that a majority would consider withdrawing services in protest against the government’s failure to increase funding for their practices.
Nearly a third (31%) of doctors who run their own practice said they would consider taking collective action in the form of shutting routine services for as much as a week if funding is not significantly increased for 2024-25.
