Junior doctors to walk out in July for longest-ever NHS industrial action
23 June 2023, 13:17
Junior doctors will strike for five consecutive days in July - in the biggest-ever NHS walkout.
British Medical Association (BMA) members will take action from July 13 to 18 which organisers say is the longest-ever period of sustained NHS industrial action.
As the announcement was made as a BMA survey showed that junior doctors report being inundated with more opportunities to move abroad in the last four months than ever before.
Just over half of the nearly 2,000 junior doctors surveyed said they have received more job advertisements from recruiters to overseas jobs since strikes were announced.
The government of South Australia even paid for trucks to be sent to junior doctor picket lines carrying job adverts offering improved pay if those doctors emigrated, it was revealed.
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Co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: "The NHS is one of this country's proudest achievements and it is shameful that we have a Government seemingly content to let it decline to the point of collapse with decades of real-terms pay cuts to doctors driving them away.
"With the 75th birthday of the NHS just days away, neglect of its workforce has left us with 7.4 million people on waiting lists for surgery and procedures, 8,500 unfilled doctors' posts in hospitals, and doctors who can barely walk down the road without a foreign government tempting them to leave an NHS where they are paid £14 per hour for a country which will pay them properly.
"It has been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished but not once have we heard from Rishi Sunak or Steve Barclay in terms of reopening negotiations since their collapse of our talks and cancelling all scheduled meetings a month ago.
"What better indication of how committed they are to ending this dispute could we have? As their refusal to even discuss pay restoration leads to continued disruption to the health service, more than four-fifths of junior doctors report finding their patients supportive - they understand the value of a fully staffed and resourced NHS."
