Junior doctors have said that more strikes in the future are not off the table despite The British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee in England accepting a 22.3% pay deal.
Junior doctors accepted a Labour Party pay deal worth 22.3% on average over two years which bought a long running pay deal battle to an end.
In a warning to the government Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairman of the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee, said “the journey is not over.”
Dr Trivedi told BBC Breakfast: “This is the first step towards restoring pay, which is all that doctors have wanted since the beginning of this campaign.
“As you’ll know, we’ve had a huge pay cut since 2008 but this marks a change in that trajectory.
“Doctors who were being paid just over £15-an-hour before this offer will now be paid a little over £17-an-hour, so it does mark an improvement, but the journey is not over.”
He added: “We want to hold on to our doctors, we want medicine to be an attractive profession so that they don’t escape to places like Canada and Australia and New Zealand.
“And this offer does not do everything in one go, but we’ve never asked for everything in one go, so as long as we continue on that journey, then we can inspire confidence for doctors to stay and to build back up our workforce so that we can bring healthcare back to a high quality system that it used to be.”
Dr Trivedi continued: “We will expect pay uplifts each and every year, as we have done in the past.
“And if those pay uplifts don’t occur in a timely fashion and at the pace that our members have asked for to restore our pay, then that’s when we’ll be going to the Government, we’ll be going to Mr Streeting and saying: ‘you wanted to inspire confidence in this process, this hasn’t inspired confidence in this process, what can we do to alleviate that?’
“And if those communications break down, then we will be thinking about going back into dispute and striking again if we need to, but that’s always a last case resort, and something we don’t want to have to do.”
Dr Laurenson said that a third of junior doctors who voted in the ballot felt that the deal “fell short”, adding: “The sentiment on the ground, from what I’ve been hearing, is that there is no security or certainty for the future.
“Our doctors need that security and that certainty for the future, which is why we’ll be having to look at April next year, the beginning of the new financial year, towards the pay review body’s recommendation to make sure that we maintain that pace towards pay restoration.
“If the pay review body does its job and respects and understands that medicine is no longer an attractive career, as it once used to be, and that it begins to try to fix the retention issues that we have, then there will be no need for further strike action.
“But if, as we see over the last 14 to 15 years, there’s more pay erosion, with real-terms pay cuts, I’m afraid we’ll have no option but to go back into dispute, because Mr Streeting would have overpromised and under-delivered.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said on Monday, “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. That’s why I made ending the strikes a priority, and we negotiated an end to them in just three weeks.
“I am pleased that our offer has been accepted, ending the strikes ahead of looming winter pressures on the NHS.
“This marks the necessary first step in our mission to cut waiting lists, reform the broken health service, and make it fit for the future.”
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