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Junior doctors in England will walk out for 72 hours in March if ballot backs industrial action

BMJ 2023; 380 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p33 (Published 06 January 2023) Cite this as: BMJ 2023;380:p33
  1. Zosia Kmietowicz
  1. The BMJ

The BMA has told the government that if a ballot for industrial action is successful junior doctors will begin their action with a 72 hour full walkout in March, during which they will not provide emergency care.

The ballot across England begins on Monday 9 January, and the BMA is still urging the health and social care secretary to meet doctors and negotiate a solution to avoid industrial action. But Steve Barclay continues to ignore all invitations to meet doctors to discuss their pay—the first health secretary for over 50 years to do so, said the BMA, making attempts to find a negotiated settlement virtually impossible.

Successive governments have overseen 15 years of real terms pay cuts for junior doctors in England, resulting in a 26.1% decline in pay since 2008-09, the BMA said. Reversing these pay cuts is essential to retaining doctors in the NHS and alleviating the staffing crisis, which is thwarting attempts to reduce waiting lists and failing to provide patients with the care they need, it said.

The government is giving junior doctors a 2% pay uplift and has excluded them from the higher 4.5% uplift for other NHS workers. It has previously said that, because the existing multiyear pay deal for junior doctors ends in March 2023, that would be the right time to discuss their pay.1

Vivek Trivedi and Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee, said, “The prime minister says his door and that of the health secretary are ‘always open.’ This simply is not true. All our calls to meet, and letters to the health secretary and his immediate predecessors, have been ignored. When we are faced with such resolute ongoing silence, despite all our attempts to start negotiations, then we are left with no choice but to act.”

The co-chairs criticised the government for ignoring the recommendation of the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration (DDRB) to review the 2% pay award for 2022-23 in light of a “betterment” clause in the previous agreement that allowed for exceptional circumstances to be considered, such as the pandemic and rising inflation. The DDRB has stated that the proposed 2% increase will be unlikely to be enough to tackle issues of motivation, retention, and productivity.

“The reality is that the doctors’ pay review body has been constrained by political interference for more than a decade,” said Trivedi and Laurenson. “Even after recommendations have been made to increase junior doctors’ pay, the government has completely ignored them and has asked the pay review body to completely exclude junior doctors from its recommendations.

When even the pay review process—broken as it is—is telling ministers to act, you know something has gone seriously wrong.”

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