Hospital doctors in England on Friday launched a new walkout in a dispute with the government over pay in the latest strike action to hit the UK’s state-funded National Health Service.
- Hospital
doctors in England have gone on strike to demand a 35% pay increase, which the
government has rejected. - Health
chiefs estimate that the repeated industrial action has cost the publicly
funded health service £1 billion. - The strike
is the fifth round of industrial action.
Hospital
doctors in England on Friday launched their latest walkout as the government
said their strike to demand a 35-percent pay increase served “only to harm
patients”.
The
four-day stoppage comes with health chiefs estimating that the repeated
industrial action had cost the publicly funded health service £1 billion.
The British
Medical Association (BMA) which represents junior doctors says their take-home
pay has fallen by 26 percent in the last 15 years.
Health
Secretary Steve Barclay issued his strongest condemnation so far of the doctors
who have rejected the government’s pay offer of six percent plus a one-off
payment of £1 250.
Writing in
the Daily Mail, he accused the BMA of “acting recklessly”.
The strike
action served “only to harm patients and put further pressure on their own
colleagues”, he added.
Doctors on
the picket line outside University College Hospital in central London hospital,
however, said they had no choice but to strike to restore pay levels and stop
doctors leaving the state-funded National Health Service (NHS).
“Full
pay restoration must happen, that’s not for negotiation, what is for
negotiation is how it is structured and what the time frame is,” Robert
Laurenson, a doctor and co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, told
AFP.
“This
is predominantly about pay because we know that many of our colleagues leave to
go to other countries and other industries simply because the pay is too poor
to be able to retain doctors,” he added.
Junior
doctors – physicians who are not senior specialists but who may still have
years of experience – make up about half of the doctors in UK hospitals.
The strike
is their fifth round of industrial action.
“Doctors
are working tirelessly to bring waiting lists down. The government are the ones
who refuse to come to the table,” added junior doctor Sumi Manirajan, who
is deputy co-chair of the committee.
“We
are chronically understaffed and everyone is at breaking point,” he added.
‘1 bn cost of
strikes’
The NHS is
grappling with record patient waiting times due to a large pandemic backlog.
A record
7.6 million people in England were waiting to start routine hospital treatment
in June, according to data published by the NHS on Thursday.
Julian
Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, said the series of strikes by junior
doctors had cost the NHS £1 billion ($1.2 billion).
Hospitals
were having to “pay premium rates to consultants” to cover for the
medics, he told BBC radio.
People pose for a photograph on Westminster Bridge with British Medical Association (BMA) branded placards calling for better pay, outside St Thomas’ Hospital in central London on 11 August 2023.
Nurses,
ambulance staff and other medical workers have all joined picket lines in
recent months, mounting more pressure on the NHS.
Other
workers across the economy have also walked out over the past year demanding
pay rises in response to the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.
According
to NHS figures, close to 778 000 medical appointments have been postponed
across the health service in England due to strike action since December.
“We’ve
seen again and again that no one benefits from this disruption,” Barclay
said, adding that the pay offer was “more generous” than for other
public sector staff.
The
government has said its pay offer announced in mid-July is “final”
and urged the BMA to drop its pay demand “immediately”.
