Senior doctors in England demand higher pay offer to avert August strikes

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The leader of England’s senior doctors has called on the government to improve its pay offer to avert further industrial action in August after NHS consultants walked out on Thursday for the first time in more than a decade.

Thousands of appointments and procedures were cancelled on the first of two days of industrial action in which the service’s most experienced doctors offered only a “Christmas Day” service, providing emergency but little routine care.

Dr Vishal Sharma, chair of the BMA’s consultants committee, told the Financial Times he and his colleagues had “tried everything to get [the government] to listen”, including “repeatedly” writing to the health secretary Steve Barclay and attempting to secure meetings with other secretaries of state.

Consultants have called for an above-inflation pay rise this year as the first step to tackling 15 years of pay erosion, after the government gave consultants a 6 per cent pay rise this year, on top of last year’s 4.5 per cent increase.

Sharma said: “All we’re asking for is fairness and so far we’ve just hit a brick wall.” 

When prime minister Rishi Sunak last week announced the government would accept recommendations of the doctors’ pay review body, he ruled out further negotiations.

The BMA, which held a packed rally at its London headquarters on Thursday addressed by RMT leader Mick Lynch, has already announced provisional strike dates of August 24 and 25.

Describing the ministers’ position as “not tenable”, Sharma said: “We really hope the government comes back with an offer before then because we do not want these strikes to continue. If the government is not moving, then unfortunately, we will have to continue taking action.”

Barclay said he hugely valued the work of NHS consultants which was why the government had accepted the independent pay review body recommendations in full, and reformed pension tax rules for consultants, an issue on which the BMA had long campaigned.

Barclay added: “My door is always open to discuss non-pay issues, but this pay award is final so I urge the BMA to end their strikes immediately.”

Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers which represents health organisations across England, said the early picture suggested staff turnout had varied significantly across trusts.

All trusts would have planned to ensure urgent and emergency care was in place. However, he warned of growing “fissures and fractures” between different staff groups as each struggled with their own cost of living pressures and pay negotiations.

These divisions threatened to have a lasting effect on productivity as the service struggled to cope with record waiting lists, he suggested.

Sharma said consultants were being “actively recruited by agencies from overseas, even governments from overseas” and were increasingly being drawn to the private sector or retiring.

“The easy thing to do is just [to] leave [the NHS]. The hard thing to do is actually take a stand and protect the profession and protect the NHS”, he added.