Resident doctors in England will walk out again in June after talks with the government failed to break a long-running dispute over pay, with the next strike set for Monday 15 June to Friday 19 June. The British Medical Association said on Wednesday it had not received enough from new Health Secretary James Murray to stop the action, which will be the 16th strike in the dispute.
The BMA's resident doctors committee, led by Dr Jack Fletcher, said the group had hoped a change at the top of the health department would bring a different approach. Instead, Fletcher said, the talks produced the same unwillingness to move seen under Wes Streeting, whom Murray replaced earlier this month. He said doctors were ready to give Murray time to settle into his post, but he had not used the chance to break what the union described as a logjam.
The strike comes after resident doctors, the new name for junior doctors, staged a six-day walkout in April. It also follows years of pay deals that the government says have already gone a long way toward restoring earnings. Resident doctors have received pay rises worth 33% over the past four years, including a 3.5% increase this year. Starting salaries are now just over £40,000, while the most senior doctors can receive £76,500 in basic pay, with thousands more available for unsocial hours and extra shifts.
The BMA argues the picture looks very different once inflation is taken into account. It says resident doctors are still being paid a fifth less than they were in 2008, using that year as the benchmark for its comparison. That gap has kept the dispute alive even after ministers put a package on the table in March that included more training jobs, faster career progression and help with out-of-pocket costs such as exam fees.
Fletcher said the BMA had hoped a change in leadership at the Department of Health and Social Care would lead to a change in approach. He said the union had been prepared to give Murray time to settle in, but instead had heard the same tired line, with vagueness on new jobs and no further money on the table. He said doctors could not be asked to negotiate in good faith for weeks and then be told there was nothing left to discuss on pay and no further details on jobs.
Murray, for his part, said he was disappointed the BMA had refused to consider further talks about strengthening the existing deal and had rushed once again to what he called unnecessary and unreasonable strike action. He said resident doctors had already received a 33.4% pay rise over the last four years, the highest anywhere across the public sector, and that further substantial increases this year would be unrealistic, unaffordable and unsustainable.
The June walkout now looks likely to extend a stalemate that neither side has found a way to end. Unless one of them moves before mid-June, hospitals in England will face another four-day strike just weeks after the last round of action, with resident doctors still pressing for a better pay settlement and ministers insisting the offer already goes far enough.
