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Resident doctors in England will strike as planned this week after they voted to reject the government’s latest offer to end the long-running pay and jobs dispute.
Resident doctors – formerly called junior doctors – will strike for five days starting on Wednesday after refusing to accept the deal in a survey by their union, the British Medical Association.
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, had proposed the deal last week. It would have increased the number of training places to enable early-career doctors to start training in their chosen medical speciality but not increased their pay for the current financial year.
Resident doctors overwhelmingly rejected the offer, by 83% to 17% on a 65% turnout. In all, 35,107 of the 55,000 resident medics who the BMA represents took part in the survey.
The union dismissed the government’s proposals as “too little, too late” to stop the strike going ahead. It will start at 7am on Wednesday and run until 7am next Monday.
In an angry response to the vote, Streeting said the strike would be a “self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous” act that would hit patients and other NHS staff at the service’s “moment of maximum danger”. He dismissed resident doctors’ 26% pay claim as a “fantasy demand”.
The stoppage will pose a challenge to hospitals, which are already grappling with the effects of the early arrival of the NHS’s usual winter crisis, driven by a wave of virulent “super flu”. It will be the 14th strike they have staged since the dispute began in March 2023.
Resident doctors have been voting over the last few days, while ministers and BMA leaders traded increasingly bitter accusations publicly about the dispute.
In an article for the Guardian, Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said it was “frankly beyond belief” that the strike would go ahead with the NHS under such intense pressure.
Streeting said the strike risked being “the Jenga piece” that caused the NHS to collapse just when patients needed it most.
Dr Jack Fletcher, the chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, said: “Our members have considered the government’s offer, and their resounding response should leave the health secretary in no doubt about how badly he has just fumbled his opportunity to end industrial action. Tens of thousands of frontline doctors have come together to say ‘no’ to what is clearly too little, too late.
“There are no new jobs in this offer. He has simply cannibalised those jobs which already existed for the sake of ‘new’ jobs on paper. Neither was there anything on what Mr Streeting has said is a journey to restoring our pay – that has clearly hit the buffers.”
The rejection of the deal is a major setback to both the government and the NHS, both of which are desperate to see the increasingly bitter dispute resolved.
Resident doctors’ salaries have risen by almost 29% over the past three years but they are seeking a further increase of 26% over the next few years. Fletcher reiterated that despite public support for the doctors having evaporated, they remained determined to achieve their longstanding goal of “full pay restoration” – the return of their salaries to the levels they were at in 2008-09, before their real-terms value was eroded.
He added: “This week’s strike is still entirely avoidable – the health secretary should now work with us in the short time we have left to come up with a credible offer to end this jobs crisis and avert the real terms pay cuts he is pushing in 2026. We’re willing to work to find a solution if he is.”
But Streeting responded to the vote by saying: “The BMA has chosen Christmas strikes to inflict damage on the NHS at the moment of maximum danger, refusing the postpone them to January to help patients and other NHS staff cope over Christmas. There is no need for these strikes to go ahead this week, and it reveals the BMA’s shocking disregard for patient safety and for other NHS staff. These strikes are self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous.
“The government’s offer would have halved competition for jobs and put more money in resident doctors’ pockets, but the BMA has again rejected it because it doesn’t meet their ask of a further 26% pay rise. Resident doctors have already had a 28.9% pay rise – there is no justification for striking just because this fantasy demand has not been met.”
Fletcher accused Streeting of “scaremongering the public into thinking that the NHS will not be able to look after them and their loved ones”.
Accusing the health secretary of “cruel and calculated” behaviour, he said Streeting “fails to have any engagement with us outside strikes and then comes to us with an offer he knows is poor and expects us to just accept it within 24 hours”.
