Junior doctors will strike again if they are not awarded “full pay restoration” despite a 22 per cent deal, a senior BMA figure has said.
BMA members have voted to accept the offer from Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, of 22.3 per cent on average over two years.
But Dr Vivek Trivedi, the junior doctors’ committee co-chairman, said that the deal was a “compromise” and “the first step towards our goal” to have full pay restoration.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Mr Streeting has talked about our pay falling behind inflation, and has talked about a journey to fair pay, and sees that journey occurring via the independent pay review bodies awarding their regular annual uplifts, and he wants to restore confidence in that process, which doctors don’t have for a number of reasons.
“But if that process does play out the way he envisages, the way that maybe it used to in the past, and that does inspire the confidence of doctors, then of course, there’s no reason for doctors to go back into dispute over pay and strike again.
“But if that doesn’t happen, and the Government does not correct that, and does not continue our journey to full pay restoration, which is what doctors have been calling for to keep their colleagues here so that medicine can remain an attractive profession in this country, then the Government will find doctors back in dispute.”
He added: “This offer puts a doctor who was before this, earning £15 an hour only on £17 now, which of course is an improvement, and it does mark the start of that journey, but the journey’s not over.”
