Jaws are dropping. Not just in Westminster, but across the country. The British Medical Association, the trade union of doctors, has voted for another 6 months of strike action. Coming within a year of a massive, record, unconditional 22% pay rise, junior doctors, now called resident doctors, want another 29%.
Of course, as is usual every year, they have already been offered a 4% pay rise, plus a bonus of £750. This offer puts them ahead of not just everyone in the NHS, but everyone in the public sector. Everyone.
Their claim is astonishing. They use as a benchmark the pay levels they were receiving back in 2008. Why 2008? Because for one reason or another there was a spike in their pay and that was the highest relative pay level ever. And how did they get to 29%? They took that pay apogee and applied the retail price index as a measure of inflation and decided that 29% would be fair.
The public sector and the government as a whole, including the ONS, use the consumer price index, a measure regarded by everyone as the fair measure. Using the CPI, junior doctors’ pay is just 4.7% lower than in 2008. And given their current offer, including the bonus, they would be back at the highest relative pay ever under the measure that all of us use.
But no, they are determined to make patients suffer so they can get massively inflationary pay rises, leaving their colleagues behind.
How the government reacts to this will be interesting. Last year, Wes Streeting attached no conditions to junior doctors’ pay rise. That was a mistake. To roll over so easily sets a precedent and that is probably why they feel so emboldened now.
I both respect and feel for Streeting. Pay up and he faces the wrath of the rest of the NHS. Stand fast and he faces the wrath of the electorate, especially every patient whose treatment is cancelled. He is trying to deliver reform, essential when you consider the model for the NHS is broadly unchanged since it started in 1948. Back then, the average age was around 65, and people rarely survived more than one critical condition. Now, people live into their 80s, with multiple critical conditions. We are asking it to do a lot.
I’ve never found anyone in the NHS who doesn’t have a serious desire to help people. But the BMA is going too far.
