Doctors’ strikes could last YEARS, militant union boss admits behind wave of devastating NHS walkouts
Junior doctors could continue to strike for years, one of the militant union bosses behind the devastating mass strikes has warned.
Dr. Emma Runswick, vice-chairman of the British Medical Association Council, said the dispute between medics and officials could continue until after the general election.
The 28-year-old, from Wirral, Merseyside, admitted this could ‘potentially’ drag on the industrial action for years.
Trainee doctors will take to the picket lines from Saturday in their latest five-day strike, coordinated by the BMA, in a bid for a 35 per cent pay rise.
Dr. Emma Runswick, vice-chairman of the British Medical Association Council, said the dispute between medics and officials could extend beyond the general election.
Junior doctors in their first year now have a basic salary of £32,300, while those with three years’ experience earn £43,900. The oldest earn £63,100
Dr. Runswick, who was voted into her role in July 2022, told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast that the strikes could continue beyond the next general election, which will take place in January 2025, even if Labor wins.
She said: “The dispute we are having now will not end with a change of government. It will end with progress on physician pay.”
Asked if this meant the strikes could continue for months or even years, she replied: ‘Possibly. I would hope this is not the case. But I was already hoping for that in October 2022.’
Dr. Runswick called for a ‘wage recovery’ for trainee doctors, for which the union has introduced a 35 per cent pay rise. She said this will reverse a 26 percent pay cut over 16 years, based on the idea that salary increases since 2008 have not kept pace with inflation.
The union estimates that implementation would cost £1.1 billion, while officials estimate the figure at more than £2 billion. Dr. Runswick says the amount is “worth it” and not “unreasonable.”
“Why have we in society decided that it is acceptable to make people who run one of the most essential services in the country poorer?” she said.
The doctor said she would “love to see” the wage increase financed by higher taxes on the wealthy.
She added: “We are dealing with a healthcare system where we cannot provide the care that patients deserve. We either continue to let that happen around us, and make the individual decision to leave medicine or the country, as thousands of us do, or we make the decision to fight back.
‘During strike action, we ensure the safety of patients in need of urgent emergency and critical care. If we do nothing, neither they nor the thousands who need treatment in the future will have access to it.”
The latest round of strikes will run from 7 a.m. on February 24 to just before midnight on February 28.
In a joint statement announcing the action earlier this month, BMA doctors’ committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said the action could have been averted if the government had agreed to come to the negotiating table come.
Around 1.4 million appointments and operations have been canceled due to the endless wave of NHS outages that started in 2022.
There have been 70 days of strikes in that period, costing the NHS £3 billion and forcing patients to wait even longer for care, with waiting lists reaching 7.62 million, with hundreds of thousands forced to wait more than a year for care.
The previous strike action by junior doctors in January saw them work on picket lines for a record six days, leading to the cancellation of 113,779 appointments.
Emergency services remain open on strike days and officials have told Britons they need urgent medical care to still seek help as normal.
Ministers have given trainee doctors an average pay increase of 8.8 percent for the 2023/2024 financial year.
However, the increase was larger for first-year doctors, who received a boost of 10.3 percent.
In December, Health Minister Victoria Atkins offered them an additional 3 percent increase in an attempt to prevent further strike action.
But the union still called the improved amount “completely insufficient.”
Junior doctors in their first year now have a basic salary of £32,300, while those with three years’ experience earn £43,900. The oldest earn £63,100.