The longest strike by junior doctors in NHS history has been announced in England, with two unions planning a five-day walkout in July.
The strike, by junior doctor members of the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA), will take place between 7:00am on Thursday 13 July and 7:00am on Tuesday 18 July.
The government has said its offer of a 5% pay rise is “fair and reasonable”, however the BMA is seeking a 35% pay increase to make up for more than a decade of below-inflation pay rises.
This will be the fourth strike by junior doctors since the pay dispute began.
Junior doctors in England are being “inundated” with job opportunities abroad, according to the BMA.
Junior doctors strike
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It noted that the Government of South Australia paid for trucks to be sent to picket lines, carrying job adverts offering improved pay if junior doctors emigrated from the UK.
The BMA’s survey of 1,953 junior doctors found 53% had received more contact from recruiters with job opportunities overseas since the strikes were announced.
Co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “The NHS is one of this country’s proudest achievements and it is shameful that we have a government seemingly content to let it decline to the point of collapse with decades of real-terms pay cuts to doctors driving them away.
“It has been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished but not once have we heard from Rishi Sunak or [health secretary] Steve Barclay in terms of reopening negotiations since their collapse of our talks and cancelling all scheduled meetings a month ago. What better indication of how committed they are to ending this dispute could we have?
“We are announcing the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history – but this is not a record that needs to go into the history books. Even now the government can avert our action by coming to the table with a credible offer on pay restoration. Restoring pay can stem the flow of Australian job adverts in doctors’ social media feeds – and lead to a future 75 years of doctors being paid fairly, in a rebuilt workforce and NHS that this country can continue to be proud of.”
HCSA junior doctors committee co-chair Dr Karim Salem said: “The government’s response to our repeated attempts to find a fair settlement has been to hope we just go away. But junior doctors aren’t going anywhere, and we won’t be silenced.
“We shouldn’t have been driven to this point and there’s still time to avoid these strikes.
“Junior doctors, our senior colleagues, NHS trust leaders, our patients – everyone is telling the government the same thing. They need to get serious, get round the table and end this dispute.”
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In Scotland, junior doctors have been offered a 14.5% pay rise over a two-year period after negotiations with the Scottish government. BMA Scotland said it would consult its members, who voted in favour of strike action earlier this month.
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