Junior doctors in England on Friday began their fifth round of strikes in six months in an ongoing dispute over pay.
The four-day strike comes as the latest official figures show the NHS waiting list for hospital treatment grew to a new record of 7.57 million patients at the end of June.
Consultant doctors are also set to walk out for two days later this month and two days next month.
Junior doctors may also strike again next month if British Medical Association (BMA) members vote to give the union a new six-month mandate.
The BMA is demanding the government “restore” NHS doctors’ salaries, saying they have been cut in real terms since 2008 by more than a quarter for junior doctors and by 35 percent for consultant doctors.
NHS Providers estimated that a series of strikes by doctors, nurses, ambulance staff and other healthcare workers over the past nine months have already cost the NHS £1 billion.
Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, said in a press release that trust leaders are “very worried about six more days of severe disruption across the NHS this month.”
Barclay: ‘Unnecessary’ Strikes ‘Only Serves to Harm Patients
Writing in the Daily Mail on Thursday, Mr. Barclay accused the BMA of acting “recklessly” by staging more strikes, saying they serve “only to harm patients and put further pressure on their own colleagues” as almost 800,000 appointments have been delayed amid the nine months of NHS strikes.
According to the health secretary, the lowest-paid junior doctors in training will see a 10.3 percent increase, bumping their basic pay by £3,800 to around £47,600.
Mr. Barclay defended the offer, saying it was higher than what was given to Armed Forces personnel and most public and private sectors.
He also said consultants will get a 6 percent pay rise, “taking their average earnings to £134,000 a year,” and that a pension rule change gave them another “annual pension above inflation tax-free.”
BMA: Competitive Pay Needed to Retain Doctors
Speaking on a picket line outside University College Hospital, London, Dr. Robert Laurenson, co-chairman of the BMA’s junior doctors committee told the government the NHS waiting list won’t go down “because you cannot retain doctors because you keep cutting their pay.”“Over the past 15 years, the government has cut our pay by 31.7 [percent] so we’re looking to restore that pay back to what is was like in 2008,” Dr. Laurenson said.
“At the moment, doctors are starting on £14 an hour, we’re asking for that to go up to £20 an hour. The government don’t want to negotiate, they don’t want to talk,” he said.
Dr. Laurenson argued the government needs to pay doctors “competitively” in order to cut short waiting lists.
Junior doctor Sumi Manirajan, deputy co-chair of the BMA’s UK doctor committee, speaking on the picket line outside University College Hospital, London, colleagues at “burnout point” every day.
The 29-year-old, who has been a junior doctor for three years, said her friends who had “left the NHS after a year of service and have gone to Australia” spoke of “how much better they are treated in Australia.”
Mr. Hartley said the nine months of striking could have pushed the NHS near “a tipping point.”
“We could be close to a tipping point. Trusts and staff are pulling out all the stops to reduce waiting times for patients but with no end to strikes in sight the sheer volume of planned treatment being put back due to industrial action will make it almost impossible for trusts to cut waiting lists as much as the government wants,” he said.
“Waiting lists are now at a record high of 7.57 million, the pressure on urgent and emergency care services is relentless and an already stretched NHS is gearing up for another high-demand winter as pressure on tight budgets mounts.
According to NHS England, the last junior doctors’ strike, which lasted five days in July, resulted in the delay of 102,000 hospital appointments, while consultant doctors’ two-day strike knocked off 65,500 appointments.
