Doctors strike will go ahead as Streeting says BMA will ‘cause unnecessary disruption to patients’
The five-day junior doctors’ strike will go ahead next week after the latest round of talks failed, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting accusing doctors of “recklessly and needlessly” opting to walk out.
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The doctor’s strike is scheduled to begin on Friday as planned, after five days of talks between the government and the British Medical Association (BMA) failed to deliver a compromise.
The BMA has been clear that strike action will only be reversed if the Government improves its 5.4% pay offer.
Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, have received a 22% increase in wages over the last two years, which the BMA argues is still around 20% lower than it was in 2008 in real terms.
The Health Secretary said he would continue talks with the union if they postpone the strike, but insisted that he wouldn’t increase his pay offer.
This failed to convince the doctors’ union, who maintain that their main reason for striking is to achieve better pay.
Read more: Patients 'may not be safe' during upcoming doctors’ strike, BMA warns
Streeting replied by saying the union "recklessly and needlessly" opted to strike, and that they “wouldn’t have lost anything” if they postponed the walkout.
Co-chairs of the BMA resident doctors committee Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt said the talks didn’t result in an offer that would increase resident doctors’ pay package, and that “this is at its core a pay dispute.”
"We have always said that no doctor wants to strike and all it would take to avoid it is a credible path to pay restoration offered by the government.
"We came to talks in good faith, keen to explore real solutions to the problems facing resident doctors today.
"Unfortunately, we did not receive an offer that would meet the scale of those challenges.
"While we were happy to discuss non-pay issues that affect doctors' finances we have always been upfront that this is at its core a pay dispute."
Streeting ruled out any additional pay rise during the most recent round of talks, but suggested other aspects of the contract - such as student debt, exam fees and working conditions - may be up for negotiation.
Calling the talks “constructive,” Streeting said the BMA had the chance to work with the government to discuss options that would have “made a real difference to resident doctors’ working conditions and created extra roles to deal with the bottlenecks that hold back their career progression.”
“Instead, they have recklessly and needlessly opted for strike action,” he said.
By refusing to postpone their strike, Streeting said the doctors “will cause unnecessary disruption to patients, put additional pressure on their NHS colleagues and not take the opportunity to improve their own working conditions.”
He added that resident doctors had the most generous pay rise in the public sector in the last two years, and that “strike action is completely unjustified, completely unprecedented in the history of British trade unionism and shows a complete disdain for patients and the wider recovery of the NHS.“
It comes after the BMA warned NHS England's approach to the upcoming strike is "seriously risky" and could lead to patient harm in emergency departments.
The NHS decision not to postpone all routine appointments will leave doctors “spread too thinly” to provide urgent care, the union said.
The last round of strikes, which also included walkouts by other health workers, came at an estimated cost of £1.5 billion to the NHS in England.
Some 1.5 million appointments, procedures and operations were postponed as a result of the stoppages.
But NHS England’s chief executive, Sir Jim Mackey, has called on hospital leaders not to cancel routine appointments during the strikes, a different approach from previous walkouts.
During the 2024 strike, a “Christmas Day” approach was adopted, meaning only urgent treatments and A&E visits took place.
On Monday, BMA leaders called on Mackey to reverse his decision, warning it would “put patients at risk” and spread doctors “too thinly.”
The BMA said: “Your decision to instruct hospitals to run non-urgent planned care stretches safe staffing far too thinly, and risks not only patient safety in urgent and emergency situations, but in planned care too.
“It also appears designed to lead to far more late, same-day cancellations for patients. Consultants cannot safely provide elective care and cover for residents at the same time.
“We therefore strongly urge you to reconsider your instructions to hospitals, which should be preparing now to postpone non-urgent planned activity in order to provide a safe urgent and emergency service in keeping with the levels of staff available.”