Resident doctors across England braved the elements to join picket lines this morning as they kicked off their latest five day strike over pay and unemployment.
The start of the strike coincided with the arrival of Storm Claudia and warnings that a month’s worth of rain could fall in a single day in England. But this did not deter doctors from turning out at picket lines around the country.
Ahead of the latest walkout the health secretary, Wes Streeting—who says that doctors no longer have the support of the public for strike action—upped his rhetoric against the BMA, claiming that the union was engaging in “cartel-like behaviour and threatening the future of the NHS.”
But in Birmingham the BMA representative Thomas Rourke, a psychiatry core training 2 (CT2) doctor, said that those on the picket line had received backing from the public. “Even despite the weather, they’ve come in and told us that they support what we’re doing, so that’s been really heartening to see,” he told The BMJ. “Every time I go and strike, I say I hope this is the last.
“What I would say to patients is, I’m really sorry this is happening, but the reason we’re striking is for the future of our profession, for the futures of doctors in the NHS, and because we need doctors for the NHS to function. If we don’t fix what’s going wrong at the moment with regard to pay and jobs, then the NHS isn’t going to function in the future.”
In a message to Streeting, Rourke added, “We’re not going anywhere—we’re going to continue to do this. We want to be at work and be caring for patients at this time. All we want is a multiyear pay deal and to obtain secure employment.”
Also on the picket line in Birmingham was Benjamin Cowdry, a GP specialty training 1 (ST1) doctor and BMA representative, who urged the health secretary to “take these strikes seriously.” Cowdry said, “Unfortunately, these strikes will continue to happen unless he puts a reasonable deal on the table which ensures that doctors have jobs, as well as resolving the pay issue, which can be resolved with a multiyear pay deal. We’re not asking for it all in one go. We can have it bit by bit over the next few years, and that will resolve the strikes.”
Too few posts
On the picket line at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, Aadam Aziz, 28, a resident doctor at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, told The BMJ, “This year we had 30 000 doctors apply for only 10 000 training posts. That means we’ve got 20 000 who are left in limbo with no job.
“We’ve got a cohort of doctors who want to be your next doctors, who are fully qualified, who want to specialise and be there for our patients, but we can’t because there aren’t enough jobs to go around.”
At the Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust in Harlow, Schmell D’Sa—an anaesthetic trainee at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn and BMA co-chair for the East of England Resident Doctors Committee—told The BMJ that public support was “really strong today.” She said, “You can hear it from all the cars honking in the background. Their message is loud and clear that they’re standing with us—that they also believe that the current state of the NHS is unacceptable. And that they believe doctors should be paid fairly, that our requests are reasonable, and that the government should listen and negotiate with us.”
Alex Boulton, a GP ST1 working in emergency medicine and member of the BMA Resident Doctors Committee in the East of England region, was also on the picket line in Essex. He said, “Mr Streeting keeps saying that he will not negotiate on pay despite the fact that we are in a pay dispute. The message is quite clear: come back, have a reasonable discussion with us, and we can negotiate and have some meaningful progress.”
Elsewhere, at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, Kat McKay, fellow in a trust grade post in internal medicine, told The BMJ that while previous strikes had stopped some of the “rot” on pay, more progress was needed and that tackling issues around specialty training and employment was “paramount.”
Speaking from the picket line, McKay said, “There are no jobs coming up, and it’s really stressful. Year on year there are more people without jobs: it’s all very well saying, ‘Oh, there will be,’ but what about now?
“I’ve known really excellent doctors who have as much experience as some of our medical registrars who still can’t get [internal medicine training] jobs. They’ve got families and mortgages and are still stuck on very short term contracts.”
McKay said that since she had qualified in 2017 the career opportunities for doctors had deteriorated so quickly that she sympathised with colleagues who were now coming through foundation training. “I do think that, no matter what the government might say at the moment, there has been such a significant devaluing of the profession, even in the time I’ve been a doctor,” she said.
Jobs as “bargaining chip”
Ahmad Barotchi, South Yorkshire deputy regional representative for the BMA Resident Doctors Committee, said that the government had broken its promises on both pay restoration and jobs. He added, “The government is acting in a childish way, using jobs as a bargaining chip for junior doctors, and to be honest, they don’t deserve any more of the goodwill.”
The latest action follows a similar five day strike by resident doctors in July.1 It comes after they rejected a fresh offer from the health secretary to end the dispute.2
As the latest strike action got under way the Times published findings from a poll by Savanta3 suggesting that most resident doctors did not support Friday’s strike. It said that 33% believed that the strike should go ahead after Streeting’s offer to end the dispute last week, while 48% said that it should have been called off and 19% were unsure. But the number of respondents to the poll was not disclosed.
Speaking to The BMJ at the St Thomas’ picket line, the BMA’s chair of council, Tom Dolphin, said, “What we’re asking for is for our pay to be restored—not all at once but over several years—back to the value that it had in 2008. The offer that he [Streeting] made doesn’t do that.
“I’m hoping that they [the government] will come to understand that they’ve got to invest in the NHS if they want it to have a future.”
