Hospital leaders in England warned they cannot guarantee patient safety during a four-day walkout by junior doctors next week, piling pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to try to end the long-running dispute over pay.
(Bloomberg) — Hospital leaders in England warned they cannot guarantee patient safety during a four-day walkout by junior doctors next week, piling pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to try to end the long-running dispute over pay.
NHS Providers — which represents National Health Service trusts — said the timing and duration of the 96-hour walkout will cause the worst disruption since a wave of industrial action in the health sector began in December.
It cited trust leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, who said they were not confident they could maintain patient safety even with resources focused on emergency treatment, critical care and maternity and neonatal care.
The looming doctors’ strike is a major headache for Sunak ahead of a general election expected next year. Just last month, his Conservative government appeared poised to draw a line under an extensive period of industrial action that has hit England’s schools, railways, hospitals and postal service.
The British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, said Thursday it would suspend the strike if the government makes a “credible offer.”
As it stands, tens of thousands of junior doctors — who are qualified medics but in clinical training — plan to walk out between 7 a.m. on Tuesday and 7 a.m. on Saturday next week. Demand for care is expected to be high after the Easter bank holiday weekend, and many other NHS staff will be on annual leave during the school holidays.
Teachers
Hospitals will be “without up to half of the medical workforce” during the strike, NHS England’s national medical director Stephen Powis said in a statement. He urged people to call 999 for “life-threatening emergencies only” during what he described as an “extremely challenging week.”
Industrial disputes in other sectors also appear to be far from resolution. The UK’s biggest teaching union, the National Education Union, took a hardened stance toward the government this week as it prepared for five more days of walkouts next term.
Britain’s Public Service Crisis May Be Final Straw for Tories
On Monday, NEU members overwhelmingly rejected a government pay offer and announced strikes in schools on April 27 and May 2. Teachers then backed a motion at the union’s annual conference in Harrogate, northern England, on Tuesday to hold another three days of strikes in late June or early July.
The union has also said it plans to re-ballot its members for further industrial action in the next academic year if the government doesn’t resolve the dispute over pay.
Even before the strikes, staff shortages mean schools are running on “skeleton staff,” Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, said in her closing speech to the conference on Thursday. “When they advertise for teaching posts there are no candidates applying.”
‘Fantasy World’
Bousted said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan had “dismissed” such warnings. “Gillian — I have to tell you, you are deluded,” she added, to cheers and applause from delegates. “You are living in a fantasy world.”
Disputes also rumble on in other sectors, where trade unions are demanding more pay for their workers to compensate for the UK’s stubbornly high inflation, which rose to 10.4% in February.
More than 130,000 civil servants are planning to strike on April 28, and Passport Office staff began a five-week walkout on Monday.
Yet there have been glimmers of hope for the government: a potential deal was agreed last month with some unions for nurses, midwives and ambulance workers, which members are currently considering. There have also been deals to end action by some railway workers.
Still, next week’s mass walkout by doctors will take the pay dispute between the public sector and government to a new level. More than 175,000 patient procedures and appointments had to be canceled in England when junior doctors went on strike for 72 hours in March.
Heightened Risks
“Of course, this time it’s four days, not three — it’s in a holiday period, we anticipate that number will be significantly higher,” Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, told BBC Radio on Thursday. “That means that more patients will have their care canceled and disrupted.”
Hartley said there’s “no doubt” of a “heightened risk for patient safety.”
Talks broke down between the BMA and the government last month. The Department of Health and Social Care blamed the BMA for making a 35% pay rise a pre-condition of the negotiations.
The BMA argues that junior doctors have suffered below-inflation pay rises for around 15 years. It says “pay restoration” would mean a raise this year of 35%.
“We very much expect that an offer will be a starting point in the discussions, rather than the final deal we agree,” BMA spokespeople Vivek Trivedi and Robert Laurenson said in a statement.
They said the strike could be suspended if Health Secretary Steve Barclay “puts a credible offer on the table that shows he is serious about addressing doctors losing more than 26% of their pay in real terms and which we believe can form the basis of negotiation.”
In education, ministers had proposed a one-time £1,000 ($1,230) payment to teachers for the 2022-2023 tax year and a 4.3% rise the following year. But some 98% of members of the NEU who cast ballots rejected that offer.
Keegan, the education secretary, said on Monday the vote was “disappointing” and the offer had been properly funded. But the NEU said the offer was not fully-funded and around half of schools would have needed to make further cuts to cover the pay rises.
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