England’s most senior hospital doctors will strike next month in a dispute over their pay and hours, prompting NHS bosses to warn that patients will suffer “pain, discomfort and inconvenience”.
Consultant doctors, who currently earn an average of £152,000 a year, will stage a two-day walkout on 25 and 26 November, as hospitals gear up for the extra pressures winter brings.
On those days, hospitals will operate with consultants providing only emergency cover, in the way they do on Christmas Day, because most will withdraw their labour.
Consultants decided to strike after 18 months of talks with the government did not lead to agreement on key issues, including their call for action to address a 25% fall in the real-terms value of their salaries since 2009/10, the British Medical Association (BMA) said.
The senior doctors also want a 10% cut in their working hours so that, for example, a consultant currently working a 40-hour week would see that shrink to 36 hours.
The BMA accused ministers of “ignoring” consultants’ concerns about burnout related to their workloads and said last week’s well below inflation pay offer of a 2.4% increase for next year was the last straw.
Consultants voted in July to take industrial action. The BMA said that since then, informal talks with the Department of Health and Social Care have produced no “meaningful” progress, only another cut to the value of their pay.
Ciarán Devane, the head of the NHS Alliance, which represents NHS leaders, said he was “astonished and dismayed” by the BMA’s move at a time when the health service is working to tackle a backlog of more than 6 million patients awaiting more than 7m treatments.
“NHS leaders will be both astonished and dismayed by the BMA’s decision to proceed with walkouts by consultants at a time when plans to restore waiting time targets hang by a thread and as teams make wider preparations for winter after a gruelling summer”, Devane said.
“Any decision to down tools risks throwing these plans further off course and will once again disrupt patient care while severely hitting NHS finances.
“A consultant walkout will result in non-urgent outpatient appointments, elective surgeries and follow-ups being postponed or rescheduled. While [postponement] is needed in the interests of patient safety, it will potentially leave patients in unnecessary pain, discomfort, and inconvenience.”
The BMA’s decision presents the prime minister, Andy Burnham, with a considerable challenge as he grapples with tight public finances and Labour’s aim of improving access to NHS care.
In June, resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – accepted a deal to end a campaign of strikes that had lasted more than three years. Consultants last staged stoppages in 2023, when they walked out for nine days during four strikes.
“Since we entered into dispute over 18 months ago we have engaged in good faith with the government, proposing practical solutions,” said Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta, the co-chairs of the BMA’s consultants committee. “But time-and-time again ministers have kicked the can down the road. Unfortunately, that road has now run out, and we have been forced to announce strikes.
“Consultants take their responsibilities incredibly seriously, and striking does not come naturally, but we are hearing loud and clear from the profession that they have had enough.
“Not only is our pay still a quarter down in real terms on what it was 17 years ago, having fallen more steeply than the rest of the economy, but we are also not being given time to dedicate our all to the NHS and patients, with quality and improvement being traded for the treadmill of target-chasing, driving colleagues to burnout through excessive workloads.”
Ben Morrin, the chief executive of NHS Employers, which represents England’s 205 health trusts, urged the BMA to be realistic about what size of pay rise is affordable.
“We need to be honest and transparent about what the NHS can afford at this time. If that limit is reached and industrial action takes place, we owe it to patients to focus on delivering the safest care we can”, said.
He added that the strike “will weaken the clinical teams in every NHS hospital, which are essential to delivering high-quality patient care this winter”.
