NHS consultant blasts striking colleagues on £128,000 demanding ‘eye-watering’ 35% pay rise
An NHS adviser has urged colleagues not to strike, as he pitted their high incomes against the poverty and struggles of miners.
Dr. David Randall said many senior doctors earn so much they can afford to walk away indefinitely and not risk their families going hungry.
He described their calls for a 35 percent wage increase as “eye-catching” and said it amounts to targeting a “bigger slice of the public pie” as national income has not grown at the same rate.
At the annual conference of the British Medical Association in Liverpool, the kidney specialist warned that such an increase would also increase disparities with colleagues.
He revealed that he was making £230 an hour for junior medics during their recent strike – about the same as a nurse made over their entire 13-hour shift.
The consultants’ strike follows five days of massacres by junior doctors in what will be the longest ever strike in the NHS’s 75-year history. Pictured: NHS junior doctors on strike on the picket line outside Southend University Hospital in Essex
The latest healthcare figures for 2022 show that the average annual base salary for full-time equivalent consultants is now £104,357 (top left image). However, the same data shows this extends to £126,125 per annum, with their basic pay supplemented by overtime, medical allowances and geographic allowances (bottom right chart)
Dr. Randall, who works at the Royal London Hospital and normally earns a lower hourly wage, said: ‘We should be glad to be in a more fortunate position than the miners whose families were starving as outside incomes fell away.
“Many of us are financially secure enough to, ironically, go on indefinite strike while deriving additional income from alternate services and the recovery program.
“We can bring the NHS to its knees, but with this power comes enormous responsibility.”
Consultants will walk out in England on July 20 and 21, despite a 4.5 per cent increase last year, bringing their average income to £128,000.
Doctors in training will go on strike from 13 to 18 July, in the longest strike in NHS history.
Meanwhile, the Royal College of Nursing has ended its union action after too few members supported more strikes in a vote.
Dr. Randall said the BMA should accept a lower pay rise that “allows us to look our colleagues in the eye.”
He added: “A 35 percent non-negotiable wage recovery is an eye-watering demand and based on a faulty logic that physicians’ incomes should not be eroded by everything that has happened to the nation since 2008.
“So our target is most of the public pie. A big pay rise for high earners will exacerbate income inequality.”
However, the BMA’s participation body rejected his calls.
After speaking at the conference, Dr. Randall added, “I work in a poor part of the country. My patients are poor. I sympathize with nurses and other healthcare professionals who are also asking for more money.
“But I think the resources are finite given the total scope of things. The national debt is high, the tax is high. We must be responsible with the resources we have.
‘I have to look my patients in the eye and explain why their appointments have been canceled due to strikes.
“If inflation means everyone gets poorer, if we accept that economic growth is not keeping pace with inflation and we’re all getting poorer, then I don’t think doctors should be the only ones who don’t feel that pain.”
He targeted colleagues’ claims that a 35 percent pay rise simply means their salaries will be brought back to 2008 levels. back what is rightfully ours.
“That idea of restoration says nothing has happened since 2008.
“I graduated in 2008, so I really have skin in the game.
“My salary has been deflating all this time. I’m not talking about something that doesn’t affect me. But every year my salary went up because of seniority.
More than half a million NHS appointments in England have been canceled due to healthcare strikes between December and April, official figures show
‘Personally I don’t think I’m being paid badly. I am grateful for my salary.
“I voted against the strike and I will not strike. That’s my decision.’
The comments come after the Mail revealed that consultants can cash in on private work on NHS strike days – a practice condemned by MPs and number 10.
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard has warned that patients will ‘pay the price’ of the strikes as waiting lists reach a record 7.4 million.
Some consultants filled in for less experienced junior colleagues during their strikes, but this is not possible the other way around.
Juniors will stage a full strike, including from A&E and cancer departments, while consultants will only provide ‘Christmas Day coverage’, canceling routine treatments and limiting care to urgent and urgent cases.
More than 650,000 appointments and surgeries have been canceled since December due to NHS strikes, including those by doctors, nurses and physiotherapists.
Action later this month is expected to bring the number near 1 million.
Dr. Philip Banfield, chairman of the BMA council, today threatened to continue the strikes until next year.
He told the conference: “We have become what governments fear most – an association undeterred by their threats and false narratives, willing to do whatever it takes for our profession and for our patients.
“And we will strike until the next general election — and beyond — if necessary.”
Delegates at the BMA conference demanded that NHS managers who bully or harass staff be banned from senior positions within the service.
They passed a motion calling for ‘regulation of NHS managers to hold those responsible for bullying and harassment accountable’, saying this would ‘negatively affect the delivery of care’ for patients.