Despite government efforts, a five-day resident doctors strike is set to launch tomorrow (Friday 25th July).
Last week health secretary Wes Streeting hosted talks with members of the British Medical Association (BMA) in an attempt to stop resident doctors from going on strike. However, the BMA said the government’s offering was not good enough and strikes will go ahead as planned tomorrow.
‘We have always said that no doctor wants to strike and all it would take to avoid it is a credible path to pay restoration offered by the government,’ Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, co-chairs of the BMA resident doctors committee, said. ‘We came to talks in good faith, keen to explore real solutions to the problems facing resident doctors today. Unfortunately, we did not receive an offer that would meet the scale of those challenges.
‘While we were happy to discuss non-pay issues that affect doctors’ finances, we have always been upfront that this is at its core, a pay dispute.’
The latest rounds of strikes have come as the BMA is seeking a 29% pay rise for resident doctors – a number that would grant, what the trade union believes, to be a full pay restoration. The BMA has remarked doctors’ earnings have fallen by 21% since 2008-09.
However, new analysis from health thinktank Nuffield Trust shows earning reductions could be far less than the BMA estimates. Experts found resident doctors pay has fallen by 4% to 10% since 2010-11.
The report read: ‘A shortage of independent analysis has meant that much of the debate has been based on flawed figures. All too often, true levels of inflation have been misrepresented, basic pay conflated with total pay, starting pay presented as average pay, whereas affordability arguments often do not recognise that some additional pay is returned to the public purse in taxes.’
Experts from the thinktank claimed they believe their method of analysis to be more robust as earnings data collection changed in 2010 – the Office for National Statistics discourages the use of the retail price index to represent inflation and instead prefers the consumer price index, which is usually lower.
In response to the report, which can be found in full here, a spokesperson from the BMA claimed that whatever method is used it still shows ‘doctors pay has fallen over the last 15 years and more.’
Photo by Maayan Nemanov via UnSplash
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