Junior doctors confirm strike over their request for 35% pay increase

© Rohin Francis / CC-BY-SA-4.0

Junior doctors in England will go on strike for five days from 24 to 28 February, the British Medical Association (BMA) has confirmed. The ongoing dispute centres around the BMA request for a 35% pay increase, which was previously rejected by the government.

The government have said that want to find a "reasonable solution", and is prepared to "go further" on their previous pay offer. Junior doctors have received a pay rise averaging almost 9% this financial year. Talks at the end of 2023 included an option of an extra 3% on top of that.

Those talks ended in early December, and no deal was reached. The BMA have now decided to go on strike, which is thought will cause many routine and non-emergency hospital appointments to be disrupted or cancelled.

The BMA said that the government had "failed to meet the deadline to put an improved pay offer on the table". Junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said in a joint statement: "We have made every effort to work with the Government in finding a fair solution to this dispute whilst trying to avoid strike action."

The BMA claim their request of a 35% pay increase will make up for what it calls "below inflation" rises since 2008. The Nuffield Trust has said: "junior doctor salaries would be around 14-15% lower in the year to March 2023 compared to what they were 12 years earlier, after accounting for inflation."

Health secretary Victoria Atkins said: "This action called by the BMA Junior Doctor Committee does not signal that they are ready to be reasonable. We urged them to put an offer to their members, but they refused. Five days of action will put enormous pressure on the NHS and is not in the spirit of constructive dialogue."

This will be the 10th strike by junior doctors since March 2023. It will follow a six-day strike by junior doctors in January, the longest in the history of the NHS, which saw about 100,000 appointments cancelled.

In January, consultants rejected a new pay offer from the government, which would have meant an extra 4.95% on average in basic pay.