Resident doctors begin 13th strike as pay dispute continues in England

NHS bosses aim to keep almost all services running as resident doctors begin a five-day strike in England.

The strike, the 13th by British Medical Association members in the long-running pay dispute, begins at 07:00 GMT and lasts until 07:00 on Wednesday.

Resident doctors (the new name for junior doctors) will no longer receive emergency and non-urgent care.

Hospitals will be under the greatest pressure, with resident physicians making up about half of the medical workforce. But NHS England said patients should still attend appointments unless instructed otherwise.

He said he wanted to keep 95% of non-urgent work, such as hip and knee operations.

The NHS aims to achieve this by redeploying and offering overtime to consultants and other senior doctors, as well as relying on those who are not on strike (around a third of resident doctors are not members of the BMA).

But this will come at a significant cost, with the NHS estimating that covering the five-day strike will cost £240m.

Despite the attempt to maintain services, patients like Colette Houlihan, 68, have still faced postponements.

He was due to have a pre-surgery appointment on Monday, but it has now been pushed back to the end of December.

Houlihan, from Cambridgeshire, who is waiting to have a benign tumor removed from his neck, said he had already had to endure two cancellations but could understand them as he was told higher priority patients needed to be seen.

“They could have had cancer. I didn’t care, but this is different.

“I am furious. By attacking they ignore the Hippocratic oath: above all, do no harm.

“The strike causes harm by delaying procedures, removing senior doctors from their positions and causing chaos within the system,” he said.

NHS England medical director Professor Meghana Pandit said it was frustrating and disappointing that there was another round of strikes at a difficult time for the NHS, with flu cases rising earlier than usual.

“Despite this, staff across the NHS are working very hard to maintain care and limit disruption,” he added.

But BMA leader Dr Tom Dolphin said keeping most services running would be “a challenge”.

He said doctors had the legal right to strike and should not be “intimidated or coerced” into working.

And he warned that his members would only leave the picket if there was a major emergency, such as a mass casualty event.

The latest strike comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting launched arguably his strongest attack on the BMA.

At a conference of health administrators this week, he called the union “morally reprehensible” and accused it of acting like a cartel, trying to hold the public and the government to ransom.

He said doctors had received generous pay rises over the past three years, worth almost 30%, bringing the average basic salary to just over £54,000.

Talks between him and the union collapsed last week after the BMA rejected a new offer to end the dispute.

Streeting has maintained all year that he could not negotiate salary, but proposed a deal that would cover out-of-pocket costs such as exam fees and membership fees, along with an increase in specialist training places.

But the BMA has argued that, despite the pay rises, resident doctors’ pay remains a fifth lower than in 2008, once inflation is taken into account.

The union has also warned that doctors are having difficulty finding work at a key stage of their training: between the second and third years, when they begin specialized training.

This year more than 30,000 applicants applied for 10,000 jobs at this stage, although some will have been foreign doctors.