The British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee has accepted the government’s 22.3% pay settlement, after 66% of junior doctors in England voted in favour of the deal.
Junior doctors – who from Wednesday (18 September) will be known as “resident doctors” – had been in dispute since October 2022 and had taken 44 days’ strike action, following more than a decade of real-term pay cuts.
The pay settlement across the two years of dispute is 22.3% on average. This comprises an additional average 4.05% for 2023-24 in addition to the previously awarded average 8.8%. This takes last year’s pay uplift to 13.2% on average and is backdated to April 2023.
The remainder of the pay increase comes from the recommended 2024-25 pay award announced in July, which gave junior doctors an average uplift of 8% across all grades.
Junior doctors pay settlement
Junior doctors pay talks begin in effort to avert further strikes
Under the deal – which health secretary Wes Streeting agreed with the BMA leadership just three weeks after coming into power – the government and junior doctors will work together to resolve wider issues affecting the workforce, including training and rotational placements.
Junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “It should never have taken so long to get here, but we have shown what can be accomplished with our determination and with a government willing to simply sit down and talk realistically about a path to pay restoration. One strike was one strike too many.
“This deal marks the end of 15 years of pay erosion with the beginning of two years of modest above-inflation pay rises. There is still a long way to go, with doctors remaining 20.8% in real terms behind where we were in 2008.
“Mr Streeting has acknowledged our pay has fallen behind and has talked about a journey to pay restoration. He believes the independent pay review body is the right vehicle for this, and if he is right then no doctor need strike over pay in future. However, in the event the pay review body disappoints, he needs to be prepared for the consequences.”
Streeting said: “We inherited a broken NHS, the most devastating dispute in the health service’s history, and negotiations hadn’t taken place with the previous ministers since March. Things should never have been allowed to get this bad.”
Sigh of relief
Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “Health leaders will breathe a massive sigh of relief to know that the ongoing pay dispute between resident doctors and government has come to a successful resolution. The last thing our members wanted was the threat of more strikes over what is expected to be a very difficult winter.
“Industrial action has had a huge impact on the NHS over the last two years, with more than 1.5 million appointments and operations being cancelled at an estimated cost to the health service of around £3 billion.
“While there is still a long way to go to address all the issues raised by resident doctors, including quality of work and education and their rotational system, we hope that discussions can move forward now pay has been agreed.”
Laurenson and Trivedi added: “The resident doctors committee, as we will be called, will be using the next months to prepare to build on their success so that future cohorts of doctors never again need to see the kind of pay cuts we have. We thank all doctors who have seen us through to this point by standing on picket lines and fighting for their worth. The campaign is not over, but we, and they, can be proud of how far we have come.”
The government has also committed to work with the doctors’ union to streamline the way in which resident doctors report additional hours they work, to ensure they are paid for the work they do. There is also agreement to reform the current system of rotational training for junior doctors as well as reviewing the training bottlenecks that previous governments have imposed, which has been blamed for the shortage of consultants and GPs.
Junior doctors who are members of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association are voting separately in a ballot (closing Sunday 22 September) on whether to accept the pay settlement.
‘Resident doctors’ – new title that reflects expertise
Last week, the BMA confirmed that from 18 September junior doctors, the cohort of staff who make up nearly a quarter of all doctors in the UK, will be known as “resident doctors”, a title that better reflects the huge range of skills and responsibilities they have.
Delegates at the junior doctors conference in April 2023 voted to abolish the “junior doctor” title because it implies they are students, apprentices and not fully qualified. The move was then agreed by the wider BMA and the profession began agreeing a replacement title.
Some titles dismissed included “postgraduate doctors” or simply “doctors” but these were deemed too broad as these could also apply to consultants, SAS doctors and GPs. “Trainee doctors” were seen to hold the same problematic implications as “junior” and maybe even more likely to be misunderstood by patients and the public as meaning “student doctors”. “Non-consultant hospital doctors” was seen as too wordy.
Ultimately, doctors landed on “resident” because it avoids confusion with other colleagues, doesn’t imply a lack of qualifications, and is snappy enough to be used day-to-day. It is also the term used in numerous other countries.
In a survey in February this year, 91% of junior doctors approved of the change from “junior” to “resident” and this was approved at the BMA’s annual representative meeting in July. Streeting has agreed to the change.
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