Junior doctors will strike for FIVE consecutive days next month in NHS’s biggest ever walk-out
Junior doctors will undertake a devastating five-day strike next month in a what their union is calling the biggest industrial action of its kind in NHS history.
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced the walkout will take place in England from 7am Thursday 13 July until 7am Tuesday 18 July.
It represents a serious and continued escalation of the bitter dispute between the union and ministers over pay in the health service.
Union officials proudly announced the action would be ‘longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history’.
The newly announced walkout also comes just a week after BMA medics once again took to the picket lines.
The British Medical Association ha sannounced they hold a record-breaking five day strike next month
More than half a million NHS appointments in England have been cancelled due to health service strikes since December, official figures show
Co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said:
‘The NHS is one of this country’s proudest achievements and it is shameful that we have a Government seemingly content to let it decline to the point of collapse with decades of real-terms pay cuts to doctors driving them away.
‘With the 75th birthday of the NHS just days away, neglect of its workforce has left us with 7.4m people on waiting lists for surgery and procedures, 8,500 unfilled doctors’ posts in hospitals, and doctors who can barely walk down the road without a foreign government tempting them to leave an NHS where they are paid £14 per hour for a country which will pay them properly.’
They added that it had been a week since their previous strike action with no movement from ministers.
This, they said, had left them with little alternative but to announce further NHS walkouts.
‘It has been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished but not once have we heard from Rishi Sunak or Steve Barclay in terms of reopening negotiations since their collapse of our talks and cancelling all scheduled meetings a month ago,’ they said.
‘What better indication of how committed they are to ending this dispute could we have?’
The union leaders said while their strike action in July would be one for the ‘history books’ ministers still had the chance to avert further disruption to patients.
‘We are announcing the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS’s history – but this is not a record that needs to go into the history books,’ they said.
‘Even now the Government can avert our action by coming to the table with a credible offer on pay restoration.’
The BMA also highlighted that other nations were taking advantage of the UK Government devaluing its medics.
They pointed to the fact that the Government of South Australia last week sent mobile billboards down to the BMA picket lines encouraging them to apply for jobs Down Under as well as targeting disenfranchised medics on social media.
Dr Laurenson and Dr Trivedi added : ‘Restoring pay can stem the flow of Australian job adverts in doctors’ social media feeds – and lead to a future 75 years of doctors being paid fairly, in a rebuilt workforce and NHS that this country can continue to be proud of.’
Tens of thousands of operations and appointments have been cancelled because of NHS strikes this year.
The new strike would be the longest in the current dispute, eclipsing a four-day walkout by medics in April.
That action led to an estimated 200,000 NHS operations and procedures being cancelled, adding to a growing list of 7million Brits waiting for elective care in the health service.
The ad campaign run by the South Australian Government which visited the British Medical Association picket lines at St George’s Hospital in London yesterday
The ads featured 50/50 images of medics balancing work with amazing pictures of the Aussie lifestyle with text saying ‘discover work-life balance at its best’ and offering financial assistance to relocate
