Health secretary to meet resident doctors in last-ditch bid to avert strikes
Crunch talks between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and resident doctors are due to take place on Thursday in a bid to prevent five consecutive days of strike action.
The Resident Doctors Committee (RDC) - part of the British Medical Association (BMA) - says its demands for a 29.2% salary increase is needed to reverse "pay erosion" since 2008.
It said this figure is based on Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation, the measure of average changes in the price of goods and services used by most households.
If talks fail, resident doctors in England are due to go on strike for five days from 7 am on July 25.
The last bout of strikes ended last September when resident doctor members voted to accept a government pay deal worth 22.3% on average over two years.
Discussions this time around could be tense, after Streeting told MPs on Monday that he did not see a 'reasonable trade union partner' in the RDC 'at this time'.
He has insisted the government will not budge on pay, but said discussions could focus on improving the working lives of resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors.
In a joint statement issued at the weekend, RDC co-chairs Dr Ross Nieuwoudt and Dr Melissa Ryan said they were hoping to 'find a solution that our members will find acceptable and that can prevent any strike action having to take place'.
What happened the last time there were doctors' strikes?
A long-running wave of strikes began in March 2023 following demands by the BMA for a substantial pay rise for doctors.
It said at the time that newly-qualified medics earned just £14.09 an hour, meaning they could earn more if they worked at Pret-A-Manger.
The union argued that resident doctors' pay had fallen 26% since 2008-2009 in real terms and asked the government for pay restoration.
After the previous Conservative government refused to come to the negotiating table, talks with the Department of Health following Labour's election victory in July 2024 was hailed as a positive step forward.
In September last year, resident doctors accepted a government pay deal worth 22.3% on average over two years, bringing to an end more than a year of strike action.
At the time, the BMA said 66% of their members voted to accept the deal; they also said the government had agreed separately to swap the term 'junior doctor' for 'resident doctor' to better reflect their expertise.
The 2025/26 pay deal saw resident doctors given a 4% increase plus £750 'on a consolidated basis', working out as an average rise of 5.4%.
Government officials said these two increases meant resident doctors had seen an average increase in pay of 28.9% over the last three years.
In May this year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it expected the average full-time basic pay for resident doctors to reach approximately £54,300 in 2025 to 2026 following the agreed-upon increase.
However, the BMA has been pushing back, saying resident doctors need 29.2% to reverse 'pay erosion' since 2008/09.
In September last year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that NHS strikes in general had cost the taxpayer almost £1.7 billion since April 2023, adding that 1.5 million appointments had been cancelled.
However, the DHSC later confirmed that the figure came from financial directions to NHS England and referred to the cost of all NHS England strikes in 2023/24, according to FullFact.
This means the figure did not include resident doctors' strikes in June and July 2024, nor strikes in March 2023, when the dispute began.
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