The NHS England chief has stated that the organisation should be more resistant to resident doctor’s pay demands. He also added that those who go on strike must face significant financial consequences.
The British Medical Association refused to continue discussions about pay. Health secretary Wes Streeting failed to convince the British Medical Association.
In September 2024, resident doctors , who were then known as junior doctors , accepted a pay settlement of 22.3%. The dispute had been ongoing since October 2022, and they had gone on strike for 44 days after more than 10 years of real pay cuts.
The BMA is calling for a salary increase by 29.2% in order to restore salaries to “full pay restoration” or to compensate the real pay decline since 2008 when adjusted for inflation.
Sir Jim Mackey is the chief executive officer of NHS England. He told hospital leaders yesterday to continue with the scheduled operations to avoid paying huge overtime to resident doctors in the future. He also said that the NHS will take a “different approach” and be “much more resistant” to the demands of physicians than it was previously.
Mackey stated that in the past, strikes were “net positive” from a financial perspective for doctors. They had cleared backlogs of patients caused by previous strikes through overtime work and extra pay. He said that this time, their actions must have “consequences”. More than 500,000 appointments, surgeries and other procedures had to be cancelled or rescheduled during the industrial action period from July 2023 until February 2024 as hospitals prioritized emergency care.
Mackey said to hospital chiefs on Wednesday that “we’ve been clear, we want a different approach.” You’ve probably noticed that we are now in a completely different place than we were the last time. We have been much more open to BMA demands and much more receptive.
The BMA is not in charge of safety decisions. It’s you and us. We’ll stay together if you make good decisions and do what you are best at.
Streeting assured hospital leaders, “we’ve got your back” if they were to make controversial decisions about spreading out staff. The BMA said that this was unsafe. It may be necessary to divert staff away from A&E in order to perform more routine surgery.
Streeting stated that “we need to look at harm in a broader sense and not just the traditional ways we think about emergency and urgent care.”
Melissa Ryan, co-chairwoman of the BMA Resident Doctors Committee, stated that the BMA didn’t want years of strikes, but ministers need to do more. “We have heard a lot of talk, but we are still waiting for action.”
The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (which represents the leaders of medical profession) warned that it would be “extremely hard to maintain safe patient treatment when they don’t know how many doctors are absent”.
The academy said that it recognized the right to strike but “called on the BMA suspend its guidance for doctors which says they should not tell their employers if they intend to strike”.
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