Junior doctors protest in Whitehall over pay and conditions during a rally on August 11, 2023 in London, … [+]
British ministers have offered doctors a 22 percent pay rise in a bid to end a pay dispute that has raged for more than a year.
English trainee doctors – around the same number as US residents – walked out of public hospitals in a series of strikes that started in March 2023.
Their most recent strike took place earlier this month, ahead of Britain’s general election.
The staff group wanted a 35% pay increase to cover what they said had been more than a decade of below-inflation pay increases. The ministers did not meet this demand, but still offered a substantial increase.
“It should never have taken this long to get here, but this offer shows what can be achieved when both parties enter into negotiations in a constructive spirit,” said Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, co-committee chairs of junior doctors.
“This offer does not aim to restore the salary losses of doctors in training over the past fifteen years. However, we have always said that we did not expect to get there in one go,” she added in a statement.
Junior doctors from the country’s British Medical Association will now vote on whether to accept the terms or continue with their dispute. Laurenson and Trivedi recommended that the offer be ratified.
If they do, it could mean the end of two years of industrial action across several staff groups. Nurses, paramedics, senior doctors and physiotherapists have all walked out in the past two years due to pay strikes that have cost hospitals billions of dollars and caused delays. more than 1.4 million appointments.
“Today marks the start of a new relationship between the Government and the staff who work in the NHS,” Chancellor Rachel Reeves said on Monday. “The whole country will welcome that.”
But another major medical group could be on the brink of its own dispute. General practitioners are voting whether or not they should hold their own strikes over the terms of a new GP contract.
However, the problems facing public health services are much broader than just staffing levels. On Monday, Reeves also announced that the government would review dozens of planned hospital builds and renovations in England.
In 2020, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government would build ’40 new hospitals’ as part of a plan now known as the New Hospitals Programme.
But costs have skyrocketed and projects have been delayed. Observers wondered how many would ever be built – let alone within the planned deadlines.
The government review may not come as a complete surprise. But it will worry the many hospital organizations that had been counting on the funds to modernize crumbling, leaking buildings.
Many of the country’s hospitals are outdated and poorly maintained. Some locations are even at risk of collapse.
“Trusts will be very concerned about further delays to the NHP,” said Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers. in a statement. “These projects have the potential to transform services for people after years of under-investment in the structure of the NHS. Too many NHS buildings and facilities are falling to pieces.”