Junior doctors want 35% pay increase over time, not immediately, says BMA leader
Good morning. When Dominic Cummings met Rishi Sunak in secret last summer to offer his advice on how Sunak might win the election, he said the prime minister should settle the NHS strikes (presumably by paying staff more). Sunak decided against employing Cummings as his campaigns supremo, but NHS staff were offered better pay deals and by the end of the year nurses, consultants and other health workers had ceased, or at least paused, strike action. But Sunak has not done enough to satisfy junior doctors in England and this morning they started a six-day strike – the longest in the NHS’s 75-year history.
As Denis Campbell reports in his overnight preview, this strike is taking place during what is seen as the busiest week of the year for hospitals.
Andrew Gregory has a Q&A about why the strike is taking place here.
And Archie Bland has an explainer that assesses some of the claims and counter-claims being made by people on each side.
The BMA, which represents junior doctors (hospital doctors below consultant level – most of them have considerable experience, and would not be considered “junior” in another workplace), says the junior doctors want a 35% pay rise to compensate for the extent to which their pay has fallen in real terms over the past 15 years.
But, in an interview on the Today programme this morning, Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said that his members were not expecting a 35% increase immediately. He said:
We’re not asking for any uplift or pay restoration to happen overnight. We are not even saying it has to happen in one year. We’re very happy to look over deals that would span a number of years.
But what we need to do is to start a way towards that, and especially not further the pay erosion. That average 3% pay uplift (the latest offer from the government, on top of the 8.8% offered last summer) would still have amounted to pay cuts for many doctors this year.
The government says it will not negotiate with the BMA while the strike is taking place. But Trivedi said this was an unnecessary condition which the government had ignored in the past. He explained:
That’s a rule of their own making. There is no law that prevents them from talking to us while strike action is happening. And in fact we saw this same government adopt a different approach when they were dealing with the criminal barristers. They negotiated with the barristers and stopped them from striking while they were striking by coming up with an offer that was appropriate to put to their membership.
Trivedi said that, if the juniors doctors were not on strike, they would just be ignored by the government.
The Commons is still in recess, and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are expected to hold their first public events of the year tomorrow, not today. But Reform UK is holding a start-of-year press conference at 10.30am, and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is also holding a campaign event in Guildford, where he will be highlighting his party’s prospects of winning seats in the Tories’ “blue wall”.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, has restated her call for the BMA to call off the junior doctors’ strike in England. Speaking to Sky News she said:
We’re very concerned about the consequences (the strike) will have, not just for this week of industrial action, but also in the weeks following, because consultants and other clinicians who are picking up the slack as junior doctors, doctors in training, are not at their work – that will be reflected in the weeks coming up with people trying to catch up with the lost time.
So it’s going to have a huge impact on our health system. My ask of the junior doctors committee is to call off these strikes and get back round the negotiating table.
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has posted a message on X pointing out that his government has managed to avoid a junior doctors’ strike.
Six days of Junior Doctor strikes in England, all because of a UK Government that chooses tax cuts for the wealthy over paying NHS staff fairly.
We have taken different choices in Scotland and avoided a single day of NHS strikes. Our budget gives the NHS a real-terms increase.
Six days of Junior Doctor strikes in England, all because of a UK Government that chooses tax cuts for the wealthy over paying NHS staff fairly.
We have taken different choices in Scotland and avoided a single day of NHS strikes. Our budget gives the NHS a real-terms increase. https://t.co/gXpEwVNktL
— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) January 3, 2024
Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, told PA Media this morning that his organisation was not obsessed with calling strikes. He said:
The notion that we’re hellbent on calling strikes, and all we want to do is call strikes, is not what we want. What we want is to negotiate an offer we can put to our members and for our members to accept it.
But he also said the six-day strike by his members in England starting today could be followed by further action if the government did not improve its offer.
I hope they come back to the table now – but from all of the signals they are sending it won’t be until our strike action finishes. And I hope at that point we can come to a resolution.
So as soon as our strike action finishes we will be asking the government to get back round the table, which as we’ve seen from what they have been saying so far, they should be very willing to do very rapidly.
If the government stall, or they don’t come to the table, or they make excuses, or they try to push things down the line without any clear reason as to why that is happening, then we will be led by our members.
In the past when those kinds of actions have been displayed by the government, our members have wanted us to call for further strike action. I hope that we don’t have to go there but I can’t rule it out.
According to a report by Steven Swinford in the Times today, Labour is considering offering tax cuts at the general election. He says:
Rachel Reeves is weighing up plans to offer income tax or national insurance cuts in Labour’s general election manifesto to show that the party is on the side of “opportunity and aspiration”.
The shadow chancellor is facing pressure from frontbenchers to make a “retail” offer on tax to voters who are struggling with the cost of living crisis. She has said she makes “no apology for wanting working people to have more money” and that she believes the tax burden is too high.
Reeves believes that tax cuts offered by Labour must be “bombproof” and should not threaten the party’s fiscal credibility, which she views as integral to an election win.
Swinford also says that, while Labour is opposed to cutting or abolishing inheritance tax, it is likely to support any move to cut income tax if Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, does that in the March budget. There have been reports suggesting a 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax is being considered. At the weekend a report in the Sunday Times quoted an unnamed cabinet minister as saying:
The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.
While junior doctors are on strike, some of their work will be covered in hospitals by consultants. But Dr Layla McCay, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts, told LBC this morning that contingency plans at individual hospitals would be in “jeopardy” if just one or two consultants were sick.
She explained:
Across the whole country leaders are telling us that this particular round of industrial action, coming at the time that it does, and being of such a long duration, is going to be perhaps (the NHS’) toughest challenge yet …
Plans have been put in place and people have been working very, very hard on these rotas. But the rotas are just about covered so it only takes a consultant or two to go off sick – there’s a lot of Covid and flu, norovirus, other winter viruses around at the moment and a couple may go off sick – then that is going to put the entire plan in jeopardy, which is why the leaders across the NHS are so concerned that this is skating on thin ice.
Junior doctors want 35% pay increase over time, not immediately, says BMA leader
Good morning. When Dominic Cummings met Rishi Sunak in secret last summer to offer his advice on how Sunak might win the election, he said the prime minister should settle the NHS strikes (presumably by paying staff more). Sunak decided against employing Cummings as his campaigns supremo, but NHS staff were offered better pay deals and by the end of the year nurses, consultants and other health workers had ceased, or at least paused, strike action. But Sunak has not done enough to satisfy junior doctors in England and this morning they started a six-day strike – the longest in the NHS’s 75-year history.
As Denis Campbell reports in his overnight preview, this strike is taking place during what is seen as the busiest week of the year for hospitals.
Andrew Gregory has a Q&A about why the strike is taking place here.
And Archie Bland has an explainer that assesses some of the claims and counter-claims being made by people on each side.
The BMA, which represents junior doctors (hospital doctors below consultant level – most of them have considerable experience, and would not be considered “junior” in another workplace), says the junior doctors want a 35% pay rise to compensate for the extent to which their pay has fallen in real terms over the past 15 years.
But, in an interview on the Today programme this morning, Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said that his members were not expecting a 35% increase immediately. He said:
We’re not asking for any uplift or pay restoration to happen overnight. We are not even saying it has to happen in one year. We’re very happy to look over deals that would span a number of years.
But what we need to do is to start a way towards that, and especially not further the pay erosion. That average 3% pay uplift (the latest offer from the government, on top of the 8.8% offered last summer) would still have amounted to pay cuts for many doctors this year.
The government says it will not negotiate with the BMA while the strike is taking place. But Trivedi said this was an unnecessary condition which the government had ignored in the past. He explained:
That’s a rule of their own making. There is no law that prevents them from talking to us while strike action is happening. And in fact we saw this same government adopt a different approach when they were dealing with the criminal barristers. They negotiated with the barristers and stopped them from striking while they were striking by coming up with an offer that was appropriate to put to their membership.
Trivedi said that, if the juniors doctors were not on strike, they would just be ignored by the government.
The Commons is still in recess, and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are expected to hold their first public events of the year tomorrow, not today. But Reform UK is holding a start-of-year press conference at 10.30am, and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is also holding a campaign event in Guildford, where he will be highlighting his party’s prospects of winning seats in the Tories’ “blue wall”.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
