To think the BMA have misjudged with another doctor's strike?

[Locutus2000]

Last year they got more than anyone else in the NHS along with an improved deal. Nurses and other AHPs received lower rises.

BMA have just announced another 'resident' doctor strike continuing to chase pay restoration to 2008 levels.

Having just had the major win with changes to IMG prioritisation and the clamp-down on PAs it feels a bit tone-deaf and I can't see Streeting going for it.

A couple of things bug me about this.

How many other professions have had a real terms reduction in pay since 2008? A lot have.

Part of the issues is also about the gap between the best paid and lowest paid. We should be looking at reducing the pay at the time end and improving things at the bottom.

So yes I think it's tone deaf.

Ok. Enjoy being treated by a ‘wannabe’. It’s what we should aspire to.

They had a lot of support last year and I was right behind them. Not now, they had a significant pay increase and this looks like greed.

The BMA’s figure is got by using RPI rates not CPI rates. Nobody - apart from the BMA - uses RP

Wrong. The government uses it to calculate loans repayments, pensions etc..

As I recall Gordon brown switched the bank of England's inflation measure to CPI instead of RPI as CPI is usually lower so could justify interest rates staying lower for longer...

Every single job in the UK underpays compared to what people were paid before 2008. At least NHS employees have scheduled increments and raises, will never be made redundant, and have a pension that adds another 30% to their wages. Private sector employees have none of those things and have had a catastrophic drop in wages over the last 17 years.

Doubtless most UK workers, if they were lucky enough to be in a union recognised by their employer, and have that union listened to by the government, would also be striking, so in those terms the doctors aren't doing anything untoward. But the vast majority of waged employees are way worse off than doctors, by every measure both relative and absolute, so actual sympathy may wear thin.

What is the incentive for kids to attain some of the highest grades and study and train in medical school for 6 years (when their peers get to start working after 3 years of uni)?

Yes - many foreign medics want to take the place of UK trained medics - but they will rightly have allegiances to their own home and inevitably will ask for more once settled here as well. Also UK-medics are subsidised by the taxpayer - it is a collossal waste to train them and lose them to Australia/Canada/medtech etc.

Lastly Consultant pay has also not kept pace. Traditionally resident doctors were paid a pittance, worked all hours that God gave but they also had subsidised/free accommodation in hospitals and could look forward to a wealthy lifestyle as Consultants. The latter is no longer the case - so they rightly are asking for more

In Wes Streetings shoes - I would shorten specialist training, increase resident doctor hours on the job and increase pay. That way you get more bang for your buck and produce Consultants (decision-makers) faster

The incentive is that they'll be in the top 10% of earners in the country. A country full of low earners, admittedly, but they're doing better than than everyone else, pretty much.

Greedy.

Consultants start on £105,000. It’s pure greed to say pay is poor. Loads of people in similarly processional roles don’t get this.

The Times suggested the other day that we (yes WE the taxpayer) should insist doctors pension contributions from the state are greatly reduced. That means our dc won’t be paying as much for doctors inflated pensions which are so generous a lot take them after 30 years. 28% input from the state. It’s outrageous.

Of course young people want to be doctors! They earn more than nearly everyone else. Also what professional counts hours worked! You get a decent salary and you work. Plus I’d make instant repayment of the student loan WE have funded obligatory too if doctors go abroad. Let’s make sure the state gets a good deal here - it never does. We just train the wrong people to be doctors from the thousands who apply. No - I’m not backing any strike.

Why are they able to strike if less than 50% voted for strike action?

Junior drs are taking the piss they have a pension scheme that everyone in the private sector would kill for with the NHS paying in 28.7% which was increased from 20.3% just last year on top of their massive payrise (which helped create that massive financial blackhole that RR keeps going on about) as for wanting another 29% they can go fuck themselves.
Please someone tell me any other job that comes with employers contributions of that size who's had payrises of the size of Junior Dr's.
The BMA bleet on about the pay of 1st year Drs who are the lowest paid drs as if their all on that wage let's be honest here the lowest paid have a basic salary of £38,831 plus nightshift allowance and overtime and that's for drs who are still training (not specialising who's their basic starting salary is £52,656 but can vary up to £73,992) and the highest paid get a basic salary of £111,441 with the same nightshift allowance and overtime.
I tell you what if Dr's want an above inflation payrise make them give up the extra 25% employers contributions to their pensions and take the minimum 3% that far to many of us get

I’m so angry with them. I work in the private sector in a FTSE100 company. I had NO pay rise for the three years during Covid , no bonus, and minimal rises since then.
They are taking the piss MASSIVELY by asking for a further 29% on top of last year’s pay rise. And striking to cause further disruption to patient waiting lists. Grrrr

@Locutus2000 a friend of mine 2y post med school doesn't know a single person in her year who is planning on staying in the nhs for more than a few years. At least 10% have left medicine already.

So do you want any doctors in the uk if you get ill? If so, they need to be paid properly.

Here’s the Guardian on the subject. I think we can safely say that the Guardian is not noted for being unsupportive of public sector workers or unions.

And it turns out that the analysis comes from the Nuffield Trust. Again, not exactly a third sector version of The Daily Telegraph.

The junior doctors were wrong to strike before and they’re wrong now.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/09/the-bma-wants-a-29-pay-rise-for-resident-doctors-but-how-did-it-calculate-these-figures

A lot has changed since 2008, by their metric pretty much every worker in the country needs pay restoration (whatever that actually means) and it would bankrupt the country if all public servants were granted the same deal they seem to want. The bill for public sector pensions are already a financial disaster coming down the tracks, meanwhile those of us working in the private sector who haven’t had pay rises either, will be taxed more and more to fund it, only to retire at 68 with next to nothing. The train driver comparison is such a cliche, I am a vet with 20 years experience, I earn nowhere near what a train driver earns either.

I have sympathy for lots of the glaring issues with the nhs, working conditions, problems with training posts and career progression, but striking for more money sounds greedy when literally everyone is struggling and the government are scratching around trying to claw money back from vulnerable groups, we have an ageing and sick population and are potentially on the brink of war. They need to read the room.

Thank you for the Guardian link, @Fringle

I have every sympathy with the bottleneck at the point of finding training posts. That this problem exists as we continue to import doctors - and, as has been said above, they are not always trained to British standards although many individuals are excellent - is symptomatic of how the NHS just isn’t joined up.

However, everyone on specialist training is a higher rate taxpayer! Senior registrars make well over £80K and the BMA proposals would take them to nearly £90K. I don’t for a moment doubt the expertise and dedication of resident doctors; I do doubt it is greater than that of their postgrad and postdoc peers slogging away on basic medical research for half the salary or less. £90K is a professorial salary in the sciences.

Even the F1 basic salary of £36K looks very good compared to the comparable point in that scientists’s career, which is a PhD studentship of about £21K (there are a few exceptions and there is London weighting, as with doctors)

Dr Melissa Ryan from the BMA has been cherrypicking her figures even more than most union advocates, focussing on basic pay for F1 doctors and diverting conversations from other aspects of resident doctor pay.

Remove them and see how the NHS copes.

Remove them and see how you would cope when seriously ill.

We live in a frankly fucking bizarre world, where a paramedic, who literally saves a persons life, is paid sonsiderably less than the manager of my local Lidl.

Some professional do actually deserve above inflation pay rises.

I think the doctors could be wrong to demand a salary like 2008 - if you remember Labour had poured money into the NHS then and then when Cons took over the 'coffers were empty' or similar according to the leaving Labour MP - so basically Labour had overspent so to demand THAT salary now is unreasonable. We then had austerity for everyone for years after that. So they are demanding too much.

That overspending myth never dies, does it? The coffers were empty because we’d just had a global financial crisis from which we emerged in a better place than many other countries. Despite austerity our national debt just kept rising and services were decimated, God knows where the money went. I have no issue with them wanting more money when the country can afford it. That isn’t now.

Not a myth see Spending on Health Services over Time below - Labour spent wayyyy more
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell

Yes we need to get rid of the time wasters and fill the spots at medical school with people that actually intend to stay in the UK. A refund of fees if you leave in 5 years would sort that out hopefully.

Yes more was spent on health and the NHS was in good shape in 2010 - it had a 70% patient satisfaction rating, it’s currently 29%. That’s not the same as overspending, which is absolutely a myth.

@BIossomtoes What do you not understand about productivity? Or so called austerity where spending on the NHS still kept rising? As it did on benefits. Your rhetoric is not correct. Other people have to pay taxes to pay doctors. If productivity falls and wages stagnate, no one gets more money and taxes don’t grow either! There was no bonus money during the Conservative period. We have also paid a price for Brexit and what’s left is gobbled up by the NHS which is the most inefficient massive organisation on the planet. No wonder no one else has it!

There was no bonus money during the Conservative period.

Well there bloody well should have been given the massive cuts in public services and the rise in debt. What the fuck were they doing with the money? The tax take virtually doubled in the 14 years they were in power.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/282632/central-government-receipts-uk/