Doctors Begin Six-Day Strike Over Training and Pay

We want to hear from you! Share your feedback in the Novara Media audience survey by 11:59pm on Sunday 12 April to be in with a chance of winning one of five £50 merch vouchers.

Resident doctors began a six-day strike today, defying prime minister Keir Starmer’s threat to withdraw 1,000 promised new training places for specialists if industrial action went ahead. 

The British Medical Association (BMA) confirmed the strike was on when talks broke down in March, after weeks of positive negotiation.

The government had promised a 3.5% increase but quietly “watered it down” last week, BMA resident doctors committee chair Jack Fletcher told the Guardian.

A row over when resident doctors would receive £700m of extra “progression pay” catalysed the breakdown in negotiations. 

Despite pay rises worth 33% over the last four years, the BMA says resident doctors are still paid a fifth less than  in 2008, once inflation is taken into account. 

One doctor told the BBC: “We’ve got young doctors coming through and then they’re worried about finding a job. If we continue this way, we are going to end up with an NHS without doctors.”

Health secretary Wes Streeting claims the long-running dispute with resident doctors has so far cost the NHS around £3bn. 

In a letter to the BMA last week, he said  the government’s offer of a 3.5% pay rise and 1,000 new specialist training places was rescinded in light of the union’s decision to press ahead with strikes. It would not be “operationally or financially possible” to fund the new places given the fallout from strikes, he claimed.

A resident doctor who has now lost her training place told the Guardian: “I was quite appalled that the government felt they could basically gamble with patient safety and care. 

“At the end of the day, it is [patients] that suffer. Me not getting into training means there is one less doctor who is able to see these patients.”

Doctors will be at the picket line from 7am on Tuesday, 7 April, to 7pm on Sunday, 13 April.