Doctors are set to go on strike for five days in row over jobs and pay, the British Medical Association (BMA) has announced.
Resident doctors in England will strike on five consecutive days from 7am on November 14 to 7am on November 19.
The BMA claims doctors are going unemployed and “struggling to find jobs” – while “shifts in hospitals go unfilled” and patients stay on waiting lists.
Resident doctors, previously named junior doctors, make up around half of all doctors in the NHS and the BMA is arguing better pay will stop them leaving.
“This is not where we wanted to be,” Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC), said announcing the strikes.
“We have spent the last week in talks with Government, pressing the Health Secretary to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed,” Dr Fletcher added.
“We know from our own survey half of second year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment, and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.
“We talked with the Government in good faith – keen for the Health Secretary to see that a deal that included options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.
“We hoped the Government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients, and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.
“Better employment prospects and restoring pay are a credible way forward that would work for doctors, work for Government, and work for our patients.
“The Health Secretary’s 11th hour letter to us today makes vague promises for some degree of change to jobs and training for two years hence, showing little understanding of the crisis here and now, or a real commitment to fix it.
“While we want to get a deal done, the Government seemingly does not, leaving us with little option but to call for strike action.”
Resident doctors have been in a pay dispute since July – demanding a 29 per cent rise.
The BMA argues that the value of resident doctors’ pay has been eroded by inflation since 2008/09, and it has published hourly pay figures showing what the pay “restoration” it is asking for would look like.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting described the move as “preposterous” and accused the BMA of “blocking a better deal for doctors”.
He warned that “the BMA’s reckless posturing will harm patients, leave other doctors and NHS staff to pick up the pieces and divert resources away from rebuilding the NHS”.
“We will not allow the BMA to wreck the NHS’s recovery,” he said.
“I urge the BMA to call off these needless strikes and come back to the table. They have a Government that wants to work with them to improve the working lives of resident doctors and create an NHS fit for the future.”
Doctors “should not be going on strike”, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative party added.
“Conservative policy is to ban strikes by doctors in the same way the police and the army cannot go on strike,” she said.
“We need to have adequate levels of healthcare. We had legislation that would provide minimum service levels, Labour scrapped it.”
NHS Providers, which represents trusts, also warned patients will “pay the price” of doctors walking out for five days. Chief executive of NHS Providers, Daniel Elkeles said: “Another strike by resident doctors is the last thing the NHS needs, particularly as we head into what’s going to be another challenging winter for the health service.
“Trust leaders will do everything they can to prepare for this five-day walkout but once again, it’ll be patients that will be left paying the price.”
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
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