Key events
And the shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has placed responsibility on the prime minister, saying:
The junior doctors’ strike this week will cause huge disruption to patient care. Where is the prime minister and why hasn’t he tried to stop it? Rishi Sunak says he ‘wouldn’t want to get in the middle of’ NHS pay disputes. Patients are crying out for leadership, but instead they are getting weakness.
The co-chairman of the BMA’s junior doctor committee, Dr Vivek Trivedi, said Barclay was being disingenuous, saying his organisation has been trying to meet him for months, and that it would still suspend strike action if the government made a credible offer.
We were knocking on the health secretary’s door, asking to meet with him to negotiate a settlement to this dispute, long before the current strike got underway.
We have been in a formal dispute since October. He refused to respond and meet us until we had a strike ballot result. He has had months to put a credible offer on the table and avert industrial action, so for him to say, ‘It’s disappointing,’ is at best disingenuous.
We have always maintained our aim is for full pay restoration – to reverse the more than 26% real-terms pay cuts Mr Barclay’s government have imposed on us over the past 15 years, putting starting salaries up by just £5 per hour to £19.
We have always maintained we are willing to negotiate on how to achieve pay restoration, so for Mr Barclay to suggest we had any preconditions is yet again disingenuous.
The reality is that the health secretary has had every opportunity to bring an end to the dispute. His decision to refuse to table a credible offer – indeed, he has not tabled a single offer so far – means that this action is solely due to this government’s repeated inaction.
We would still be willing to suspend strike action this week if the secretary of state makes a credible offer that can be the basis of negotiation.
As the strikes begin, the health and social care secretary Steve Barclay has said:
It is extremely disappointing the BMA has called strike action for four consecutive days. Not only will the walkouts risk patient safety, but they have also been timed to maximise disruption after the Easter break.
I hoped to begin formal pay negotiations with the BMA last month but its demand for a 35% pay rise is unreasonable – it would result in some junior doctors receiving a pay rise of over £20,000.
If the BMA is willing to move significantly from this position and cancel strikes we can resume confidential talks and find a way forward, as we have done with other unions.
People should attend appointments unless told otherwise by the NHS, continue to call 999 in a life-threatening emergency and use NHS 111 online services for non-urgent health needs.
There are fears for patient safety during the strike and managers have said it has left care “on a knife edge”, while the NHS Confederation’s chief executive Matthew Taylor said the number of appointments cancelled – previously suggested to be 250,000 – was likely to rise by another 100,000.
Taylor called the situation “heartbreaking” and said he was considering asking the two parties to call in Acas, the conciliation service, to provide some basis for negotiations.
The BMA’s leadership has previously noted the dire state the NHS found itself in under successive Conservative governments, with members’ workloads and patients’ waiting lists at “record highs”.
The organisation claimed no “viable offer” was put forward at recent talks, and that the health secretary Steve Barclay did not even attend in person – leaving them with no remaining option but to take industrial action. Barclay has said:
I hoped to begin formal pay negotiations with the BMA last month but its demand for a 35% pay rise is unreasonable – it would result in some junior doctors receiving a pay rise of over £20,000.
The BMA has said its members’ pay has been eroded by 25% by years of wage stagnation and price inflation, and that it is only seeking restoration of the pay levels seen 15 years ago.
The junior doctors taking strike action are trainee medics and range from the newly qualified to those who are very experienced and are at just below the level of a consultant.
Junior doctors stage major strike action
Junior doctors across England are walking out on a four-day strike this morning, in a worsening dispute over pay which threatens huge disruption to the NHS.
An estimated 350,000 appointments, including operations, will be cancelled as a result of the action that follows years of realterms pay cuts that the government refuses to rectify.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) have been mounting picket lines outside hospitals for the past hour, and will do so until Saturday morning, in the longest stoppage of the wave of unrest.
Nurses, ambulance crews and other health workers have also been taking action since last year.
