Tens of thousands of England’s junior doctors are walking out of hospitals across the country, plunging the National Health Service into the longest strike in its history at a time of record waiting lists.
The five-day strike, which started at 7 a.m. Thursday, adds to three previous walkouts covering a total of 10 days in March, April and June that saw some 20,000 medics take industrial action.
The long-running dispute over pay lays bare the challenge faced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government in trying to bear down on inflation that’s running at more than four times the official 2% target while also satisfying the pay demands of public sector workers who have seen their living standards eroded by rising prices. On Wednesday, the teaching union NASUWT said its members had voted to take strike action.
A final decision on the next round of pay rises for workers including doctors and teachers is expected later on Thursday. A person familiar with the matter said that cabinet ministers on Thursday morning signed off on a plan based on pay recommendations made by review bodies that the government views as independent.
Sunak on Wednesday said that in making decisions on pay, he’ll be guided by “fairness” toward both public sector workers and the taxpayers who fund their wages, and the government’s “responsibility” to bear down on inflation.
At stake for the prime minister is his pledge to halve inflation to about 5.25% this year, one of five promises he’s asked voters to judge him by. With prices proving sticky and rising 8.7% in May according to the latest data, that’s looking harder to achieve.
Waiting Lists
But another of his promises is to cut NHS waiting lists, which is complicated by the ongoing strikes. The most recent 72-hour walkout by doctors disrupted 106,000 appointments, while strikes across the health service have so far led to over 651,000 appointments and procedures being rescheduled. That helped push waiting lists for routine hospital treatment in England to a record 7.5 million by the end of May according to NHS data released Thursday.
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“We cannot continue like this,” NHS national medical officer Stephen Powis said in an earlier statement, highlighting the health service’s record backlog.
Still, the NHS said it had coped well with May’s industrial action, treating nearly 4.5 million patients within its targeted 18-week waiting period — a record high.
The doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, has called on the UK government to follow the example of Scotland’s devolved administration, after an agreement was reached with the Scottish arm of the BMA to increase junior doctors’ pay by 12.4%. That led to the union calling off strike action while members vote on the offer. The Welsh arm of the BMA says it’s not had to ballot for strikes, as Wales’ government has been open to discussions.
Both the premier and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt have warned of the need to avoid a wage-price spiral in which generous pay rises spark greater household spending, fueling further rises in prices. Inflation hasn’t dipped below 8% since March last year.
‘Complete Inflexibility’
“The complete inflexibility we see from the UK Government today is baffling, frustrating, and ultimately destructive for everyone who wants waiting lists to go down and NHS staffing numbers to go up,” the BMA’s junior doctors committee said in a statement.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay said in a statement that the BMA’s decision to go ahead with the strike is “disappointing” and will “put patient safety at risk.”
The junior doctors’ strike comes ahead of the first walkout by senior doctors in the current wave of industrial action. Consultants represented by the BMA will be striking on July 20-21 for 48 hours, ahead of radiographers’ strikes from July 25-27.
In recent junior doctors’ strikes, consultants have been able to cover their junior colleagues, whereas junior doctors can’t cover their senior colleagues while they strike.
The BMA has been campaigning for the government to reverse pay erosion that it says doctors have faced since 2008: a 26% decline in real terms for junior doctors and a 35% drop for senior medics, according to the union.
“If the BMA shows willingness to move significantly from their current pay demands and cancels these damaging and disruptive strikes, we can get around the table to find a fair deal to resolve this dispute,” Barclay said.
Britain has been facing strikes on multiple fronts as stubbornly high inflation and energy costs have plunged the country into a cost-of-living crisis. Although settlements have been reached with Royal Mail’s postal workers and some sections of staff at both the NHS and civil service, disputes are ongoing with rail workers, doctors, teachers and university staff.
Why Strike-Averse Britain Is Plagued by Labor Unrest: QuickTake
(Updates with figures on NHS performance in seventh and ninth paragraphs.)
