Doctors in England have announced another five-day strike next month in their ongoing row over jobs and pay. The British Medical Association (BMA) said resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on November 14 to 7am on November 19. Previously known as junior doctors, resident doctors make up more than half of all doctors in the NHS.
NHS Providers, which represents trusts, warned that patients would pay the price. 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.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting hit out at the “reckless” new wave of industrial action, and warned that the BMA was “walking away from an offer to improve resident doctors’ working conditions and create more specialty training roles to progress their careers”.
He said: “It is preposterous that the BMA have rushed headlong into more damaging strike action a week after its new leadership opened discussions with the government.
“After resident doctors have received a 28.9% pay rise, the Government has been clear that we simply cannot go further on pay this year.
“The BMA are blocking a better deal for doctors. These unreasonable and unnecessary strikes do not have the public’s support, nor did a majority of resident doctors vote for them.
“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.”
The strikes come as pressure on the NHS is expected to start mounting ahead of winter. Mr Streeting said he would “not allow the BMA to wreck the NHS’s recovery”, adding: “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.”
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.
The BMA said it had spent recent weeks in talks with the Government, trying to “end the scandal of doctors going unemployed”.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC), said: “This is not where we wanted to be.
“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.”
Dr Fletcher said an “11th hour letter” from Mr Streeting had made “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”.
He added: “While we want to get a deal done, the Government seemingly does not, leaving us with little option but to call for strike action.”
