Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Strikes by doctors in England will go ahead this week after they rejected a last-ditch offer from health secretary Wes Streeting to avert a stoppage in the run-up to Christmas.
Resident doctors — formerly known as junior doctors — will walk out for five days from 7am on Wednesday in a bitter escalation of a dispute with the government over pay and jobs, the British Medical Association said on Monday.
Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA’s resident doctors’ committee, said the union’s members had considered Streeting’s offer, which included legislation to give UK-trained junior doctors priority access to speciality training posts over international medical graduates.
But their “resounding response [in a vote] should leave the health secretary in no doubt about how badly he has just fumbled his opportunity to end industrial action”, he added.
Some 83 per cent of resident doctors voted to go ahead with the walkout, compared with 17 per cent who backed shelving it, according to the BMA. Turnout was 65 per cent. The action was first announced on December 1.
Health leaders have warned of the impact of the strikes as the NHS grapples with one of its worst flu seasons on record, as well as a surge in demand for ambulances and accident and emergency treatment.
Data published on Thursday by NHS England showed an average of 2,660 people in hospital with flu every day last week, up 55 per cent on the previous seven-day period.
Responding to the BMA’s announcement, Streeting hit out at the “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous” strikes and said the government’s offer “would have halved competition for jobs and put more money in resident doctors’ pockets”.
“I am appealing to ordinary resident doctors to go to work this week. There is a different magnitude of risk in striking at this moment,” he added.
Under Streeting’s offer, ministers had pledged to create an extra 4,000 specialist training posts over the next three years, with the first 1,000 posts in place by 2026.
The BMA has called for jobs reform, but there was no offer to increase pay, which remains at the heart of the dispute.
The country’s main medical union is demanding a pay rise of 26 per cent for resident doctors, to make up for what it argues are below-inflation salary increases since 2008.
Last year, having pledged to end the wave of health service walkouts when he took office, Streeting agreed a pay rise of 22 per cent over two years with the BMA.
Rory Deighton, acute and community care director at the NHS Confederation, which represents health managers in England, said the BMA’s decision to reject the offer was “bitterly disappointing”.
“These strikes come at the worst possible time, with rapidly rising flu levels putting huge strain on hospitals,” he added.
