AS MORE than 60,000 junior doctors begin three days of strike action at 7am this morning, the British Medical Association (BMA) warns that two-thirds of them fear the NHS won’t survive the next ten years.
A new survey of junior doctors today reveals the impact the government’s refusal to make a credible pay offer is having on the profession’s morale.
Eighty nine per cent of junior doctors in England report that this attitude to negotiation has left them feeling less valued than they were before the dispute started.
More than two-thirds (67%) fear the NHS will not exist in 10 years’ time, while 88% expect the NHS to get worse over the next 18 months, with 80% blaming the government.
BMA chair of council, Professor Philip Banfield, wrote to Tory Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, urging him to intervene to resolve the dispute, saying: ‘No doctor wants to strike.
‘They have been forced to do so to try and get your government to listen and understand the realities of how desperate things have become on the frontline of the NHS.
‘I urge you to listen to our doctors and to meet with me and our Junior Doctors Committee as soon as possible to find a way forward in this dispute.’
Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, said: ‘Junior doctors are in despair at this government’s refusal to listen. It should never have taken two whole rounds of strike action to even put a number on the table, and for that number to be a 5% pay offer – in a year of double-digit inflation, itself another pay cut – beggars belief.
‘We have made clear junior doctors are looking for the full restoration of our pay, which has seen a 26% cut, a pay cut in real terms by more than a quarter over the last 15 years.
‘Today, they are demonstrating what that means to the survival of the NHS. Junior doctors don’t expect the NHS to survive at the current rate. And they are right – it cannot survive without its most precious resource, its workforce.
‘The NHS can only function with a workforce that is properly valued, and that is impossible when doctors are being told they are worth a quarter less than they were 15 years ago.
‘When doctors say that the government’s attitude is causing them to think about leaving the NHS, the government has to listen. But the refusal to listen is not just the fault of the Health Secretary. It is clear now that doctors don’t believe he has been given the power to end the dispute with a fair offer, even if he wanted to. We therefore look to Rishi Sunak to intervene as the individual with the power over the purse strings.
‘He has ultimate responsibility for the NHS and his political legacy will rest on how he treats it. He has to think carefully today about whether he wants to drive more doctors out with his attitude, or whether he wants to leave an NHS in 10 years’ time that we can all be proud of.’
