Junior doctors in England will walk out for 96 hours from April 11, the British Medical Association has announced, in a significant escalation of their battle for a 35 per cent pay rise.
Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, said that during talks this week health and social care secretary Steve Barclay had “failed to make any credible offer” and they had “concluded that the government was not serious about resolving the dispute”.
Health leaders expressed concern about the impact of another walkout, after a 72-hour strike earlier this month resulted in the cancellation of more than 175,000 appointments and operations — by far the most disruptive stoppage in a wave of industrial action by NHS workers that began in mid-December.
“This threatens the biggest disruption from NHS walkouts so far,” said Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers, which represents health leaders. There should be “no doubt about the scale of the impact on patients, staff and the NHS”, she added, saying it was “hugely disappointing” that talks between the two sides had broken down.
She pointed out that the walkout would immediately follow the four-day Easter bank holiday weekend, “meaning demand will have piled up before the strike even begins”.
Junior doctors’ leaders accused the government of “[dragging] its feet at every opportunity. It has not presented any credible offer and is refusing to accept that there is any case for pay restoration, describing our central ask as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unreasonable’.”
In a letter to Barclay, they accused him of producing “an additional list of unacceptable preconditions” during the meeting on Wednesday, and “expecting us to accept them there and then”.
They also said he had briefed the media despite having asked BMA negotiators to keep the discussions confidential, claiming he had created “a deficit in trust”.
The Department of Health and Social Care said Barclay had met the junior doctors committee “in the hope of beginning constructive talks to resolve the current dispute”.
It added that the union had placed a precondition on the discussions of a 35 per cent pay rise, which it described as “unreasonable”, and said the government’s door remained “open to constructive conversations” as it had had with other health unions.
Later the junior doctors’ leaders said: “The ask of 35 per cent pay restoration is our starting position, and we are willing to meet with the health secretary anywhere, anytime, to negotiate what this might look like.”
Unlike nurses and ambulance workers, the junior doctors have not agreed to exempt areas such as emergency and critical care from walkouts.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents health organisations in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, warned the latest action would be “a blow to leaders’ efforts to tackle the backlog, and further industrial action will have a significant impact on patient care”.
He said hospital leaders had been hoping for an outcome similar to negotiations with the other NHS unions, all but one of which last week recommended that their members accept a pay offer covering both the current financial year and 2023-24.
Complicating matters was that trust leaders were unlikely to be able to call again on consultants to fill rota gaps, due to many having accumulated leave from providing cover during the first strikes.
“This poses a huge challenge to services already stretched by having too few staff, so another walkout poses a real risk to patient safety,” Taylor added. The government “must act decisively to provide a meaningful incentive to make junior doctors reconsider and come back to the table”.
Separately, the smaller Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association announced its own simultaneous strike by junior doctors.
HCSA president Dr Naru Narayanan said: “This isn’t about unions not playing ball, it is about a complacent underestimation of the strength of feeling on the ground and the impact that ever-decreasing pay is having on services.”