Junior doctors in England are set to strike for five days over a long-running pay dispute, bringing a new wave of disruption to the NHS in the week before a general election.
Thousands of patients will face treatment being cut after the British Medical Association announced a strike from 7am on June 27 until 7am on July 2. The vote is on July 4.
The development will increase pressure on Rishi Sunak, who has been accused of delaying an agreement over pay, to resolve the dispute quickly.
In a statement on Wednesday, Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said: “We have made it clear to the government that we will strike if talks do not end with a satisfactory pay offer. For more than 18 months, we have been calling on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to put forward proposals to restore the wages junior doctors have lost over the last 15 years – effectively more than a quarter of their salary.”
When they went into mediation with the government this month, they said they were under the impression “we have a functioning government and they will have a proposal soon”. “It’s clear that there is no proposal now. Junior doctors are fed up and their patience is at an end.”
Laurenson and Trivedi added that Mr Sunak still had the opportunity to show he cared about the NHS and its staff: “If he makes commitments during this election that are acceptable to the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee there would be no need to call strike action.”
Health leaders have expressed concern, warning that a five-day strike would again jeopardise efforts to clear record waiting lists and push other services to the limits.
Junior doctors in England voted in March to continue striking until mid-September, and doctors affiliated to the BMA voted overwhelmingly to go on strike for another 41-day period from March 2023.
Of the 62% turnout, 98% supported striking for another six months. Support for taking short-term actions, such as demanding a 35% wage increase and refusing overtime, was almost unanimous, with 97% in favor and 3% opposed.
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They are calling for a 35% pay rise as a “full recovery” for the 26% fall in the real value of their salaries since 2008.
