Junior Doctors In England Begin New Strike

The NHS will face major disruption this week as junior doctors launch five days of industrial action, with services already under increasing pressure, England’s top doctor has warned today.

With Yellow Heat Health Alerts for many parts of the country, the NHS is urging the public to use services as they normally would if they need them – with NHS 111 services available for urgent needs, and 999 for emergencies.

The latest strike action will run from 7am on Thursday (27 June) until 7am on Tuesday 2 July, and is set to affect most routine care as the NHS prioritises urgent and emergency care, with consultants stepping in to cover for junior doctors, who make up 50% of the medical workforce.

Since strikes began in late 2022, more than 1.4 million inpatient and outpatient appointments have had to be rescheduled. During the most recent action in February, 91,048 inpatient and outpatient appointments were rescheduled, and 23,760 staff were absent from work at the peak of the strikes.

BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said:
“It is immensely disappointing that the Prime Minister has once again failed to deliver for his constituents and NHS patients.

“The PM has cynically blamed his own failure to get waiting lists down on striking doctors, all the while dragging out talks in the full knowledge that it was going to cause yet more strike action. By first calling an election and then refusing any attempt to engage he has shown he clearly had no intention of sorting this dispute out in good time.

“We have been as reasonable as we can: we gave him a final chance to put forward an offer. When he did not we gave him plenty of time to correct his mistake and gave him a clear way of doing so. He could have put in writing a commitment to pay restoration should he form the next Government. At a time when he is making plenty of commitments in a general election, this only meant making one more.

“No doctor wants to strike – not this time nor the ten rounds of action before it. We have been forced to this position by more than a decade of savage pay cuts, and nothing would make us happier than returning to work this week with a commitment to pay restoration.

“Once again though, the Prime Minister has failed to take the opportunity in front of him. His own ministers now admit that the failure to negotiate with us has been a terrible mistake, acknowledging that the only way to solve this dispute was by getting round the table and discussing pay with us. Now, at the very last, we ask the Prime Minister to consider whether they might have a point.”