Jessica O'ConnorResident doctors across England have confirmed they will go ahead with planned industrial action this week, following unsuccessful negotiations with the Government over pay and working conditions.
The announcement comes after the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Resident Doctors Committee (RDC) met on Tuesday to review a letter from Health Secretary Wes Streeting, which they concluded fell short of offering any substantive proposals.
Talks between the RDC and Government officials had been ongoing in recent days in an attempt to avoid further disruption.
However, the committee determined that the response from the Health Secretary did not contain sufficient movement on core issues, particularly pay restoration.
Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, co-chairs of the RDC, said: “We have been in talks with Wes Streeting and with his officials over the last few days, trying urgently to reach a compromise that will allow us to call off industrial action.
“We have always said that no doctor wants to strike and all it would take to avoid it is a credible path to pay restoration offered by the Government.
“We came to talks in good faith, keen to explore real solutions to the problems facing resident doctors today.”
They added: “Unfortunately, we did not receive an offer that would meet the scale of those challenges. While we were happy to discuss non-pay issues that affect doctors’ finances we have always been upfront that this is at its core a pay dispute.
“The simplest and most direct means of restoring the more than a fifth of our pay that has eroded since 2008 is to raise our pay.
“While we were keen to discuss other items, it was made very clear by the Government that this obvious course of action was going to remain off the table.
“Student debt and the cost of training remain crushing burdens on the finances of resident doctors. We had hoped that there would be enough new ideas about relieving these burdens that we could make some progress in these talks. Disappointingly, what we saw would not have been significant enough to change the day-to-day financial situation for our members.”
Ryan and Nieuwoudt continued: “The non-pay aspects of last year’s pay deal have still not been delivered, which has shaken the confidence of our members that any further non-pay elements would be honoured.
“What we have seen so far is a series of ‘no’s’ – no to movement on pay, no to student loan forgiveness, no to any credible move forwards.
“What we need to see are some ways forward, some kind of positive approach to get us out of this dispute. At present it looks as if these talks have not seen such a breakthrough and so regrettably, strikes must now proceed.
“However our door remains open, and we are glad to have met with the Secretary of State in a constructive spirit. We want to keep talking – but we don’t accept we can’t talk about pay.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has not yet issued a formal response to the RDC’s latest decision.
